The Creation of the Overview Institute

Frank White

Doug said that he had read a book called the Overview Effect: Human Evolution and Space Exploration by writer Frank White, that talked about this very experience, and Edgar had been one of a dozen astronauts interviewed for it.  While it had been published in the mid-80’s and was not widely known outside the space community, it identified and named the very experience they wanted to communicate. 

David read the book, agreed that it would be a great platform to build on, and contacted Frank White, who immediacy joined the group.  We agreed that Frank would focus on the philosophy in his book, David would develop the cognitive and media theory models, Edgar would be our “space experience” expert, and Doug would develop the first simulation technology.

Non-Profit Space

Unexpectedly, in 2006, David received a tax-free inheritance of more than $100K, allowing him to produce five Overview themed conference events in the space community; four sponsored by either the National Space Society or the Space Frontier Foundation, two of the largest non-profit space community organizations. 

In 2007, The World Space Center held its largest ever conference, as the first day of the SFF’s annual conference in Washington D.C.  As a result of the success of that event, in 2008, as a featured event at the NSS’s annual conference, also in D.C., the Overview Institute was announced, with David and Frank as co-founders, and 19 leaders in space, cognitive science, and simulation media as Founding Members.

“Overview”

After four years of growth and development, the Institute was approached by Planetary Collective, a young group of documentary makers, which spent much of 2012 creating a 20 min doc called “Overview”.  Premiered at our sixth conference at Harvard, it was released on Vimeo in early 2013 and quickly began accumulating millions of views (currently 8.2M). Two more Harvard conferences followed and one at the National Air and Space Museum that year all of which brought the Overview Effect and Institute into much greater visibility.