Humanity from Space (2015 TV Movie) User Reviews

It was pretty good

[calebf-65721 · 7/10 · 16 December 2021]

The PBS documentary, Humanity from Space, gives the interconnectivity of our modern world context in a way that is visually stunning and incredibly informative. It does this with a generous amount of panning cinematic shots, captivating CGI renderings, and interviews with both historians and scientists. Although this documentary's main point of interest is the history of all the major technological advancements that have been critical to the development of human civilizations, it can be used to inform discussions on human resource use over time as well. The documentary starts off with the agricultural revolution, the advancement that was the foundation of the first human civilizations and goes all the way to the development of the internet, explaining how and where each major revolution in between came to be. It was apparent by watching that over time as the human population has grown, many of the technologies that were the most significant were those that connected people, either by physical proximity (agricultural revolution, railroad and other vehicles) or through the use of a device (telegraph/phone/internet). As the human population has grown, so too has our level of connectedness. In order to achieve this, however, there has been quite a large price to pay. The amount of resources needed to fuel global power grids, build the roads we drive over, construct our cities, and power our vehicles, is incomprehensibly large. The primary example given for this massive demand for a resource was oil which drives our global economy and is extracted at global rate of about 4 million barrels an hour. What's more is that in just 150 years human development has already demanded the extraction of one trillion barrels, and this is just one of the resources exploited for human growth. There was little mention of the glaring errors made along the path to global connectivity in this film, however, and as a result the theme was disproportionally cheery. For example, the discovery of the Americas was depicted only as an opportunity for increased global trade, with no emphasis on the exploitation that followed.

Doomed, that's what we are, and we did it to ourselves, nothing will ever change that.

[deloudelouvain · 9/10 · 10 January 2020]

I'm actually quite flabbergasted that I'm the first one to review this documentary. I'm writing this in 2020 and so nobody found it necessary to talk or review this important documentary made in 2015. Important to me, even though I already knew about almost everything explained in Humanity From Space, because it remains an eye-opener, very well documented with facts and most of all numbers. It's like a documentary about one of my favorite websites, worldometers, where you see the numbers and statistics of all kind of stuff increasing at a staggering speed, like the world population, the fossil fuels used, the water we use or the food we eat, and all kind of other interesting and disturbing facts. The documentary is very well shot, nice images of our beloved planet, the whole evolution of our humanity explained in simple, understandable words. You don't have to be a scientist to see we're driving a very fast car at maximum speed towards a wall, and our brakes are not working, and the wall isn't moving, and we're not planning on taking our foot from that gas pedal. I'm fifty-one, childless, so what will happen in a near future isn't really my problem but I'm sure I will still witness some catastrophic events. Humanity is bound to self destruct itself, no matter what new revolutionary methods of surviving we discover. At one point our planet will be oversaturated, whether we like it or not. Nothing will change that, as humans just don't have the discipline to give up their new technologies, whether it is their transportations, electronical gadgets, or any other comfort we are used to now. We're just too selfish for that, and probably too dumb to fully understand. Inventors like Edison, Tesla, Drake and others, discoverers of new futuristic technologies, made our lives easier, but in a near future they will have caused our extinction, and I'm sure they were not thinking what consequences those inventions and discoveries would entail. This documentary should be a mandatory watch to everyone, but the truth is we just don't have the time anymore to think about important things like that, let alone do something about it, we have to be available at all times, producing and consuming is our only preoccupation, watching this documentary isn't, speaking or reviewing it even lesser apparently.

Beautiful music and wonderful edits

[ialexander-dehaan · 9/10 · 9 August 2021]

I remember watching this when it came out .It was very good and the Soundtrack was exclusively two steps from hell. It showed what we're doing to our planet and also hope Of how we were able to stop it and like a certain other review would like you to believe. In summary a beautifully well done documentary that I would watch again if for some reason I wasn't taken of PBS.