The Overview Effect and Empowering Environmental Awareness and Activism

The Nicholas School of the Environment presents a talk by David Beaver, co-founder of the Overview Institute, the only organization in the space community researching and educating on the worldview shifting impact of space travel on the human mind and society. For the last decade Beaver has been working in the field of commercial space travel, focusing on the cognitive, media and social issues underlying the "Overview Effect" of the space experience as described by the astronauts. He has conducted original research and lectured on the cognitive science of perception and media images and its relationship to design, perception, art, film, virtual reality and other fields in seminars at six major graduate schools, including the Duke University Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. The talk is free and open to the Duke community.