Free Knowledge Culture Calendar/August 7

Today in 1959 the Explorer 6 satellite was launched. It took the first photograph of Earth from orbit. It was the humble beginning of looking at the Earth from outside, which transformed people’s view of their home, especially once the first color images of the whole earth got published.

After an inspiring LSD trip, technology visionary Stewart Brand petitioned NASA to release one of the first color photographs (ATS-3, 1967) and he put it on the cover of his influential Whole Earth Catalog. This colorful island in the black void became a significant symbol, especially for the at least partially technophile hippie counterculture, and contributed to the rise of the environmental movement as people began to speak of “Spaceship Earth” and celebrate Earth Day. The social ambitions of the hippie movement and its search for a new perspective on everything, for a “planetary consciousness”, the associated use of psychedelic drugs – it all constituted an important background for the emergence of the free software movement and the entire Silicon Valley IT industry. The later Blue Marble composite image became one of the most reproduced images in history.