The Breakdown: Tagged 'big blue marble'

I got this video via Mark Lacter at LA Biz Observed (he's also a KPCC colleague). It's an edited compression of footage shot from the International Space Station. [Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.]

It's beautiful, to be sure. But I was immediately struck by the omnipresence of technology: the carpets of city lights and the gyrations of the space station itself. If you zipped in from a neighboring star-system, there'd be no mistaking where the action is among our nine planets (I still count Pluto).

I suppose the question is, Does technology transform nature or somehow make it more compelling to look at, from orbit!

Contrast this with the last vivid rendering of Planet Earth than I can remember, from my youth in the Skylab era. I'd have to say that it WAS a big blue marble. Now it's something altogether more...intense.