Beyond Earth (ATWG) - Chapter 4 - The Overview Effect and the Future of Humans in Space by Frank White
From The Space Library
Chapter 4
The Overview Effect and the Future of Humans In Space
By Frank White
"And that whole process of what you identify with begins to shift. When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing."
Apollo 9 astronaut Russell L. Schweickart in The Overview Effect, Chapter Three
Abstract
The Overview Effect is a simple yet profound concept when we consider the future of humans in space. It refers specifically to the experience that human beings have in orbit or on the moon, but it can be expanded to go far beyond that initial change in awareness.
The Overview Effect is only the beginning; it describes one of several changes in consciousness that have occurred as a result of even the limited experience of humans in space over the past 45 years. When we speak of the future of humans in space, the key is how far ahead we wish to look at how consciousness will evolve. The changes that will take place will be very different over the next 50, 100, or 1,000 years, but they are likely to be increasingly profound.
When I wrote the manuscript that became the first edition of The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution in 1987, my emphasis was initially on "The Overview Effect," and "Space Exploration." (1) By the time I had finished the book, however, my interest had shifted to a significant degree to the other part of the subtitle, "Human Evolution." When we begin thinking about the changes that will affect human beings and human society as we move off the home planet, into the solar system, and then into the wider universe, evolution necessarily becomes a prime topic, if not the prime topic. And it is evolution at every level: biological, philosophical, political, economic, and spiritual.
Motivations for Exploration
When human beings first began to venture onto the space frontier in the 1960s, a whole range of motivations drove their adventurous explorations. These motives included nationalistic competition, the spirit of exploration in its purest sense, and the effort to increase scientific knowledge. At the forefront of the reasons stood the struggle for supremacy on Earth between the "Free World," led by the United States, and the "Communist Bloc," led by the Soviet Union. Since the they couldn't fight a nuclear war without destroying civilization, the quest for superiority shifted to the heavens, and the "space race" became a proxy contest, the winner supposedly proving that its system for organizing society was superior. While this was, to some extent, a spurious notion, other nations watched the contest with interest that was linked to their desire to be on the winning side. It was also expected that whichever side dominated the high ground of space could also dominate the Earth militarily, and this has been proven to be valid as we see in light of the impact of satellite imagery on warfighting today.
The United States won the space race by landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade, as President Kennedy had vowed we would do. The Soviet moon program failed, even though they had been extremely successful in Earth orbit, and the Soviet Union collapsed some 20 years later. The demise of the Soviet empire was in large part due to the technological Overview Effect, as satellites in orbit beamed images of a better life to the suppressed peoples of Eastern Europe and other nations of the "evil empire" that secret police, Berlin walls, and gulags could not suppress.
Now a new space race may be beginning as China, the only remaining Communist superpower, plans for space programs in orbit, on the moon, and across the solar system. We can hypothesize that the recently-announced dramatic changes in US space policy, which had previously limited most effort to Low Earth Orbit but is now pointing to the moon, Mars, and beyond, and has announced intentions to weaponize the frontier, is at least in part being driven by Chinese actions. Only time will tell how this contest turns out. But meanwhile, new and more positive motivations are now appearing on the scene as private enterprise, supplemented by the enthusiasm of wealthy entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Robert Branson, Paul Allen, and Jeff Bezos begin to seek profits in orbit through space tourism and space settlements.
Beyond Competition
Many of the early responses to the existence of the frontier were centrifugal, divisively separating humanity according to Earth-based national identities, rather than centripetal, i.e., drawing humanity together as a single species that is exploring the universe together. That is where the Overview Effect comes in, as it is, first and foremost, a profound realization of the unity and oneness of our planet and our species, an insight that is triggered by seeing the Earth from orbit or the moon.
This experience as been felt strongly by many astronauts, some of whom, such as Rusty Schweickert, returned to Earth to start organizations intended to help to bring unity to their home countries. The Association of Space Explorers, for example, came into being in the waning days of the Cold War, and made a modest contribution to ending it.
Advocates of space exploration have long held out the dream of human beings living in a new way on the frontier, together rather than as separate tribes, in permanent peace rather than engaged in continuous war, and the Overview Effect, represented by images of the Earth from orbit, is one of the most powerful symbols of that dream.
This dream needs substantive proposals, however, to become real; pictures alone are not enough, because as we move farther outward into the universe the forces pulling us apart will increasingly impact on our species and our emerging space-based civilization. These forces of evolution, either natural or shaped by humanity itself in the struggle to adapt to new environments, will likely create not only new and different political and economic systems, but new species as well.
This vision of the future is clearly described by Ben Finney and Eric Jones when they write:
This advance will not be limited to the birth of one new species... By spreading into space we will embark on an adaptive radiation of hominidae that will spread intelligent life as far as technology or limits placed by any competing life forms will allow. (2)
The Human Space Program
How can human unity be maintained in the face of such mind-boggling diversity? In writing The Overview Effect, it became clear to me that the process of speciation, the process that describes the emergence of new species on Earth, will also be at work in space. There seems little doubt that the impact of radiation, low gravity, and other non-terrestrial forces will begin to shape us in new ways. Some of those on the space frontier may well choose to use the new tools of genetic engineering to accelerate the evolutionary process, and it's even possible to imagine a being able to live in free space, roaming the vacuum among the stars and planets like dolphins in terrestrial seas. Out of these processes will likely emerge at least one new species, Homo Spaciens, and perhaps many more.
In The Overview Effect, I proposed that we should create a "Human Space Program," a millennium-long commitment to exploring the universe and understanding the transformations of consciousness inherent in the exploration process. The idea of this program is to constitute a conceptual unity for our thinking as we move out into the universe and begin to evolve in different directions.
Such a program would also have to include policies and procedures for dealing with extraterrestrial cultures that are likely to be contacted, some of them more advanced than humans, some less. For example, the idea of the "Prime Directive" as invented in Star Trek is a good start, and as our descendants also become extraterrestrials in the truest sense of the word, the process will become ever more complex.
The Post-Human Space Program
Having failed to achieve unity with diversity on our home planet, what makes us believe that we can accomplish it on the larger canvas of the solar system, galaxy, and universe? The answer may be that we have little or no choice. If we do not create and evolve a broader philosophy of life than we now have, and take it out into the universe with us, the result is likely to be a repetition of the worst aspects of life on Earth as expressed in David Brin's novels about the "uplift wars."
This new "Post-Human Space Program" will need to be both broad enough and deep enough to encompass all sentient life in the universe, including humans, non-humans, post-humans, extraterrestrials and other forms of intelligence, including any advanced non-organic intelligence that might be embedded in non-biological media such as silicon.
This post-human space program also lays the foundation for a universal civilization, one that's currently beyond our limited comprehension, but as Rusty Schweickart points out, leaving the planet begins to shift our identity from national entities to "the whole thing." And as we evolve further into the universe, the nature of that "whole thing" will also evolve, from planet to solar system to galaxy to universe.
So just as we are now creating a "planetary overview system" that includes the human species, the biosphere of Earth, and the global technology infrastructure, we will eventually be part of a universal overview system, and while this book is about humans in space, a longer term view would point to the idea of intelligence in the universe as the most important concept for us to think about. The first dawning of that new intelligence begins with The Overview Effect, the view of the Earth from orbit or the moon, yet as profound as it must have seemed at the time, it was really just the beginning of a long journey. Many of us are realizing now that our journey into space is a collective "hero's journey," one in which we can all play a heroic role.
References
- (1) The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1987 (1st edition). Second edition published by AIAA in 1998.
- (2) Excerpt from a paper by Finney and Jones delivered at a Space Studies Institute conference and quoted in The Overview Effect.
Extracted from the book Beyond Earth - The Future of Humans in Space edited by Bob Krone ©2006 Apogee Books ISBN 978-1-894959-41-4
 Buy This Book Click here |
