Humanity from Space

A trip through 12,000 years of development, the film shows how seemingly small flashes of innovation have changed the course of civilization. The program considers the challenges humanity will face in order to survive as our global population soars.

In the modern world, technology links all of us. For the first time ever, we can see humanity on a global scale and look at how our vast, planet-spanning networks impact the Earth in a way never before possible — from space.

Our interconnected planet has been in the making for thousands of years. How have the flashes of brilliance that have enabled humanity to develop the modern world impacted the needs of future generations?

The development of steam mechanization changes humanity’s impact on the world forever. From living predominantly agricultural lives, humanity has moved to vast urban settlements, which have grown over the last couple of hundred years. Although this change is relatively recent, our modern global society can now not survive without cities.

From space the illuminated world is a thing of extraordinary beauty. Almost everything we do involves electricity, and this interconnectivity of our electrified world can be seen from space.

It took humanity 11.5 thousand years to reach a global population of one billion people, but only another 130 years to double that. Up until now, humanity has been successful in developing the means to sustain this level of growth, but how can we continue to provide the food, water and power required as the world’s population is set to increase by two billion over a single generation?