The Limited Impact of Current Conventional Earth Images
Lovelock’s comment about the image “we are now so familiar with” is the problem. We (especially those of us born after the pictures first appeared) now take them for granted, as if we have always had that perspective. And yet, as I have explained previously, the pictures do not actually give us the experience that alternately turned the astronauts mute or waxing poetic. And, unless you saw those pictures for the first time, in that magical extended moment of the Apollo program, or the brief following period when they first began to saturate our minds and image-world, that hyper-real, “magical” effect is now dulled through familiarity.
Why We Should "Viralize" the term Overview Effect
My previous post on the reticence of space leaders to refer to the Overview Effect publically, and the misconceptions and lack of familiarity with the astronaut sources that have lead to it, is a perfect introduction to why the term should be widely and quickly spread. Why it should be deliberately “viralized”.
The Overview Effect Shifts the Environmental Awareness of Space Travelers
Dr. Charles Berry, the astronauts’ long-time physician and surgeon said that not one of the astronauts under his care “came back unchanged” after having this unique experience. “I think some of them…” he continued, “…don’t see how it affected them.” Indeed, they have often struggled to explain both the experience itself and its impact on their minds and lives.
Sensory Overload as a Major Factor in the Overview Effect
It’s clear from an abundance of astronaut accounts that one of, and perhaps the single most significant, aspect of the first encounter with space and the view of the Earth is the sheer overload of new sensory experiences. Numerous astronauts have described this sense of sensory overload in graphic ways. Commercial space traveler to the ISS, Richard Garriott, who grew up in the Houston space community as the son of Shuttle pilot Owen Garriott (and therefore knew more about the experience of the astronauts than many other commercial travelers) nonetheless described it as “drinking from a fire-hose of new information”. NASA astronaut Thomas Jones said, “I struggled constantly to make sense of an avalanche of new sensations and perceptions”. “‘It is a pity that my eyes have seen more than my brain has been able to assimilate,’ exclaimed Michael Collins.