Stewart Brand is an American writer who wrote the Whole Earth Catalog. Brand was also responsible for the button campaign in 1966, where he had buttons made that said, “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?” Brand sent them out to NASA officials, members of Congress, UN officials, Soviet scientists and diplomats, Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller. He began selling them at Universities for twenty-five cents.
While majority of people suspected the Earth was just flat and infinite. Brand’s perspective changed when he was gazing at a San Fran skyline – with the little help of some LSD, he realized the buildings were not parallel, because the Earth seemed to be curving under them. Wanting to show everyone that the Earth was not just this infinite flat world, he needed something to prove this. He believed that seeing a photograph of the whole Earth would change a person’s perception. Having no one ever seen a photograph of the Earth, it made him even more curious. Earth, where we live, what does it even look like? Is it in fact round or flat? A photograph of the whole Earth, Brand knew, would be a very powerful symbol. Proving to all these people, changing their whole perspective on the world, that the Earth is in fact a sphere.
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