In 1957 Sputnik, the world’s first man-made satellite, dazzled
people as it zipped around the planet. By the beginning of the
twenty-first century, more than eight thousand satellites orbited
the Earth, and satellite practices such as live transmission,
direct broadcasting, remote sensing, and astronomical observation
had altered how we imagined ourselves in relation to others and our
planet within the cosmos. In Cultures in Orbit, Lisa Parks analyzes
these satellite practices and shows how they have affected meanings
of “the global” and “the televisual.” Parks suggests that
the convergence of broadcast, satellite, and computer technologies
necessitates an expanded definition of “television,” one that
encompasses practices of military monitoring and scientific
observation as well as commercial entertainment and public
broadcasting.Roaming across the disciplines of media studies,
geography, and science and technology studies, Parks examines uses
of satellites by broadcasters, military officials, archaeologists,
and astronomers. She looks at Our World, a live intercontinental
television program that reached five hundred million viewers in
1967, and Imparja tv, an Aboriginal satellite tv network in
Australia. Turning to satellites’ remote-sensing capabilities,
she explores the U.S. military’s production of satellite images
of the war in Bosnia as well as archaeologists’ use of satellites
in the excavation of Cleopatra’s palace in Alexandria, Egypt.
Parks’s reflections on how Western fantasies of control are
implicated in the Hubble telescope’s views of outer space point
to a broader concern: that while satellite uses promise a “global
village,” they also cut and divide the planet in ways that extend
the hegemony of the post-industrial West. In focusing on such
contradictions, Parks highlights how satellites cross paths with
cultural politics and social struggles.
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