Episode: 1

How To See The World.

Just from the introduction of Nicholas Mirzoeff’s How to See the World. There are couple of points which stood out to me.

Blue marble.

Although believed to be the most reproduced photograph ever (Mirzoeff 2015). In reality only three people (the members of the apollo 17 crew) have actually seen the earth from this perspective since 1972.

Yet today the world is physically different from the one we see in blue marble, and its changing fast. (Mirzoeff 2015)

In 2012 NASA attempt to recreate another Blue Marble. But instead of taking a photo from space of the entire planet much like the crew of apollo 17 did, the new image actually was produced from a combination of multiple digital images taken by satellite. The 2012 Blue Marble is made to look like it was taken from a single place but it wasn’t. As Mirzoff states the image is accurate all in detail but false in the fact it gives the illusion of being taken in one place at one moment in time.

Which leads on to the metaphor of how we visualise the world today:

“We assemble a world from pieces, assuming that what we see is both coherent and equivalent to reality. Until we discover it is not.”

This metaphor by Mirzoeff stands out to me because of the underlying truth of it all. We see the world and interact with it as if it was a whole and equally balanced, when actually it isn’t and we find out the hard way. Mirzoeff shows a prime example of this by comparing it to the 2008 Financial crisis. The global financial market collapsed from a small number of people unable to keep up with there mortgages. The very connectedness of the global financial market made it impossible to contain what would have been a local misfortune (Mirzoeff 2015).  Showing how we are one world and we are connected so tightly that the actions of others affect everyone whether people like it or not.

This can be seen in modern society today with problems like Syrian refugee crisis and the war on terror. European countries have been opening and closing there borders to the coming fleeing refugees’ of Syria due to the actions on going conflict of two opposing aggressive powers. Affecting the entire world as the european countries are unable or choose to not cope with the increased population and turn these asylum seekers away.

Entry into many countries are difficult due to a small minority within these refugees seeking asylum as they have lashed out at the countries giving them aid, giving the population a negative view on all refugees.

But even as connected as modern society is to each other through social media etc. its still difficult to change the world.

Oh how a picture can paint a thousand worlds.

Sources:

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. “How to See the World”. Penguin Random House. 2015.

Astronaut photograph AS17-148-22727 “Blue Marble”. Courtesy NASA Johnson Space Center Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. December 7, 1972. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=1133

NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring. Blue Marble 2012. https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2159.html