Once we do colonize the solar system I'm sure invidual moons of giant planets will play a larger role than the actual planets. So I don't see this working in the future.
The only future we can truly expect, aside from total annihilation and reset of the planet, would be a total colonization of the solar system.
But, if it is to be a "flag for planet earth", it would not need encompass colonies on other worlds, and it wouldn't be the goal of such a flag to do so. If, as someone else suggested, the right idea is a flag for humanity, then your argument works.
It's still where we as mankind originated and seems somewhat appropriate. However, maybe that's short sighted and we will get a very anti-earth separatist movement from the colonies.
That one is a lot more interesting, though it's basically just a map, which is atypical for flags.
The OP's flag is very abstract. Presumably, any other alien race also strives for unity and lives.
It's hard to create a better flag without actually knowing aliens and having some idea of commonalities and differences with humanity. Indeed, maybe we need a flag for humanity, not planet earth?
Well, the exact number of countries is a very messy issue and the definition of what is a country tends to be "whatever other countries acknowledge to be one". This can be especially awkward if some of the other countries don't want to accept its status and the rest plays along because they have no incentive to get involved.
Seems like using a flag that gives an unknown contact your home address is a bad idea. That information might not be something we want to communicate right off the bat.
I just read that and the Dark Forrest and that (fundamental) part of the book honestly made no sense to me. His claim that you can't locate a signal's source location was in complete conflict with everything I thought I knew about astronomy and how we locate things in space.
One suggested solution to the Fermi paradox is that any civilization that gets noisy enough to get noticed quickly gets attacked and destroyed (or taught to hide better in the future...)
Since we are constantly broadcasting at high energy and with interesting patterns, I wouldn't worry about that. Everyone who sees this flag is either from Earth or knows its position very well.
That is functionally a horrible design. Imagine a couple hundred solar systems. It is very likely that one will have exactly 8 planets with their 3rd planet being their home planet. And even if such a system doesn't exist, this map doesn't stand out at all. At a glance it could represent any solar system: "Hey, this map has planets and a sun. Which solar system is that? I have no idea." This introduces unnecessary confusion and possible conflicts.
Symbolic representation of a solar system is the most generic thing you can choose about a solar system. A flag should be something unique that stands out from other ones.
1) Blue and white aren't exactly politically neutral. They tried to give Iraq a blue and white flag, with blue stripes representing the rivers. It did not go well.
2) A flag should not be so complex that children cannot draw it with crayons. The interlocking rings are nice, but the specificity of which goes under which makes things too difficult. The union jack is perfect example of this complexity but at least there is was the result of various mergers.
I completely agree with your second point. Being able to easily draw a flag is a really nice indicator of how nice your flag is (eg. is it too complex? Does it scale well?).
Look at the image posted by dakridge: https://imgur.com/gallery/7ze3a
Anyone could easily draw that, and that makes it much better than OP's flag.
Ya, but its a little dated now. Any reference to the number of planets cannot survive the next upstart science teacher pushing out a new definition to get himself on the daily show.
Are you referring to Pluto losing its status as a Planet? That was a complicated process that was based on new discoveries and not some idea by some "upstart science teacher" on the daily show. Keeping Pluto as a planet would have made our definition of planet very wide and to be consistent Ceres should have to be turned back into a planet as well.
Point 2 is a reasonable concern, but in this case, I think it's fine. If a child draws interlocking rings with a crayon, it's impossible to tell which ring is on top. So children can draw this without a problem, they just draw each circle in whatever order they want and it will look fine. The ordering concerns only come into play when using a medium that can represent which ring is on top at each crossing.
It's an interesting start, but the balance feels a bit off. A bit too yonic in the center and the way the rings overlap with negative space makes it look worse at small sizes. Realistically speaking a flag is in many ways the way you are different from other flags but this raises the question: Who is looking at the flag of Earth? Who does the flag not represent? In the short term I'd argue it's Venusians or Lunarian settlers. To them a flag that represents origins is more important. I like the idea of a blue background symbolizing water / the earth sky, and the primary molecule that makes up our actual tissue, but the symbol in the middle shouldn't be based on circles. All planetary life would want to use a circle. Especially as the flag for the first planet that humans arise from, it's weak.
In the long term the symbol for Earthlings may even be observed by aliens. In what ways will we be different from them? The flag may even be used as a symbol for other Earth species like Dolphins once we get the technology to communicate with them effectively or to artificially increase their intelligence.
Uh oh, world flag? What`s next a universal P2P crypto currency to be used across nations...? Smells like NWO reptilian agenda is advancing :-)
Seriously though, this is really nice initiative.
For the purpose of human unity, this is a great idea. As globalization progresses, rallying behind divisive banners may become less and less relevant (or they may shift to non territorial notions, but that's a whole different story).
But why overthink the symbolism? We already have the globe outline [1] as a relatively well understood symbol.
Yeah, I'd say acceptable, and I could get used to it with time. But honestly, it seems to me that every time someone makes a flag for a real-world thing, it almost always suck. Why can't they just hire Michael Okuda, whose work in Star Trek (and NASA) produced really pretty logos and flags?
Those are all either 1) a derivation of the general "starfleet arrowhead" or 2) a ripoff of the UN flag. Most of them are also afflicted with awful outdated-looking gradients.
I'm not sure if "ripoff" is the best way to think of those designs. They were likely conciously constructed with those elements with the intent of portraying a believable future descended from our present.
As with these sorts of things, I respect the academic exercise, but they always feel really arbitrary. Like, I could pick fifty different decent symbols and color schemes and come up with something that kind of looked good and might be a good Earth flag in a movie or something. If that's the goal, then the challenge isn't really that hard.
If you really wanted to explore a flag for Earth, you'd engage people from around the world. What symbols are important to them? What colors? How do they want to be seen? What does it even mean to them to have a flag that represents Earth as something uniquely ours? And such. Then begin to distill these ideas down into a flag. Or try to create a process by which an idea could be brought about. And try to get buy-in from all of these diverse people. That's the hard part. The interesting part!
(Also, nitpick about the video: 5:8 != the Golden Ratio.)
And that's the fundamental flaw of human nature that prevents collaboration at a large scale: Everything needs a story, a hero and a name. That that slows decision processes down almost to stagnation, and it often results in decisions that aren't based on reason, but on names, heroes and stories. To some extent reputation is certainly a useful heuristic, but at some point everybody has to accept that they are only bags of cells that have to execute the most rational action sequences in order to survive. In that sense I would actually be in favor of a simplistic Earth flag design. We'll likely have to remove any memetic baggage from our decision making in order to survive.
If you read until the page's end, you'll see this is an undergrad school project. So, I'd guess bringing all the world's nations to consensus was out of scope.
That said, they did a wonderful job, and, as indicated by the fact this is on the front page, they have captured a world wide consensus of sorts.
Great, give us an Earth flag and we can go stick it in things and claim them! Then we can explain to the local inhabitants how that has changed their situation. We'll need pamphlets in a universal language too.
Yet another possibility is to use UN flag as representing earth?
Also any "planetary" space program, as opposed to country specific programs like NASA for US, JAXA for Japan etc, can be under some newly created body, like "UN space program" or something.
I thought of the same thing. Aren't the United Nations supposed to represent us all on several issues? Though even if there is a maritime organization, there's nothing regarding space and its exploration. I guess it's time to bring in more bureaucrats :-)
There are a large number of political and practical reasons why the U.N. flag isn't going to be used to represent earth, the biggest one being that few nations would say the U.N. as a body represents anythijg more than the interests of the five permanent members of the security council.
Add on the fact that the organization as a whole is bloated and encumbered by institutional dogfighting that would put Microsoft to shame, I don't see any UN funded/backed/approved space ventures happening anytime soon. Theres a reason the ISS isn't under a UN flag.
Can you imagine why and how any of those powers -- or any of the others -- would agree to anything else?
If the security council can agree on a policy how to represent Earth, they have armed might to back it up.
If they do not, all the bets are off, but I suspect that most of the powers and many smaller countries would do their utmost to fight down any independent movement claiming to represent the Earth their governments do not approve of.
The UN is a bloated thing of corruption, but so is most of all of the organized humanity on any scale, so that's quite fitting. Most of our existing international operational frameworks both de jure and de facto are coordinated under the UN or very related organizations. Assuming the world will resemble the one we live in now, if a need to represent the Earth arises (like, say, alien contact) and if everyone who matters agrees how to deal with the aliens, they'll probably just stick the UN sticker on that decision. If they do not, sucks for us.
If someone not-UN will start their space adventure to find aliens, they'll use their own nationalist / corporate / ideological symbolism. If they in addition claim to represent the Earth or the Humanity instead of just themselves without everyone's approval (can't see that happening, I doubt the permanent members would agree precisely because the reasons you outlined), they will probably have a war at their hands at home. In that case and without drastic changes in the international political reality, I'd wager that the ones who can make their claim to stick would be the UN permanent council members, because that's how they got in there in the first place.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 181 ms ] threadNow this, this has pizzazz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_in_Futurama#/media/Fi... /s
The only future we can truly expect, aside from total annihilation and reset of the planet, would be a total colonization of the solar system.
It looks quite good actually
The OP's flag is very abstract. Presumably, any other alien race also strives for unity and lives.
It's hard to create a better flag without actually knowing aliens and having some idea of commonalities and differences with humanity. Indeed, maybe we need a flag for humanity, not planet earth?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Cyprus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Kosovo
I have similar reservations about the US flag. :)
http://leonardodavinci.stanford.edu/submissions/clabaugh/ima...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque#/media/File:Pio...
And my personal favorite: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Voyager_...
(BTW there is a flag for earth: http://static.news18.com/pix/2015/04/UN_flag.jpg )
http://www.exploringbinary.com/binary-code-on-the-pioneer-10...
http://i.imgur.com/WT7TUAf.png
https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/37udsu/my_best...
Symbolic representation of a solar system is the most generic thing you can choose about a solar system. A flag should be something unique that stands out from other ones.
1) Blue and white aren't exactly politically neutral. They tried to give Iraq a blue and white flag, with blue stripes representing the rivers. It did not go well.
2) A flag should not be so complex that children cannot draw it with crayons. The interlocking rings are nice, but the specificity of which goes under which makes things too difficult. The union jack is perfect example of this complexity but at least there is was the result of various mergers.
Look at the image posted by dakridge: https://imgur.com/gallery/7ze3a Anyone could easily draw that, and that makes it much better than OP's flag.
In the long term the symbol for Earthlings may even be observed by aliens. In what ways will we be different from them? The flag may even be used as a symbol for other Earth species like Dolphins once we get the technology to communicate with them effectively or to artificially increase their intelligence.
definitely not trying to push an agenda, folks
But why overthink the symbolism? We already have the globe outline [1] as a relatively well understood symbol.
[1] Unicode U+1F310
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/underwire/2009/06/image-9a...
https://startreklives.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/emblem.gif
--
Still, I'm willing to wield current design because solidarity as a species means more to me than petty design issues :).
Flags are supposed to be simple, and Michael Okuda's work has too many details.
Aqua, terra, aer et somniorum.
I seem to recall a game (or something) that had a similar logo to this flag but had to be redesigned.
Joking aside, I kinda dig it.
If you really wanted to explore a flag for Earth, you'd engage people from around the world. What symbols are important to them? What colors? How do they want to be seen? What does it even mean to them to have a flag that represents Earth as something uniquely ours? And such. Then begin to distill these ideas down into a flag. Or try to create a process by which an idea could be brought about. And try to get buy-in from all of these diverse people. That's the hard part. The interesting part!
(Also, nitpick about the video: 5:8 != the Golden Ratio.)
"Make a static, single, identifiable representation of a massive, diverse, scattered, irregularly sparse time-malleable dataset"
That said, they did a wonderful job, and, as indicated by the fact this is on the front page, they have captured a world wide consensus of sorts.
Also any "planetary" space program, as opposed to country specific programs like NASA for US, JAXA for Japan etc, can be under some newly created body, like "UN space program" or something.
Add on the fact that the organization as a whole is bloated and encumbered by institutional dogfighting that would put Microsoft to shame, I don't see any UN funded/backed/approved space ventures happening anytime soon. Theres a reason the ISS isn't under a UN flag.
If the security council can agree on a policy how to represent Earth, they have armed might to back it up.
If they do not, all the bets are off, but I suspect that most of the powers and many smaller countries would do their utmost to fight down any independent movement claiming to represent the Earth their governments do not approve of.
The UN is a bloated thing of corruption, but so is most of all of the organized humanity on any scale, so that's quite fitting. Most of our existing international operational frameworks both de jure and de facto are coordinated under the UN or very related organizations. Assuming the world will resemble the one we live in now, if a need to represent the Earth arises (like, say, alien contact) and if everyone who matters agrees how to deal with the aliens, they'll probably just stick the UN sticker on that decision. If they do not, sucks for us.
If someone not-UN will start their space adventure to find aliens, they'll use their own nationalist / corporate / ideological symbolism. If they in addition claim to represent the Earth or the Humanity instead of just themselves without everyone's approval (can't see that happening, I doubt the permanent members would agree precisely because the reasons you outlined), they will probably have a war at their hands at home. In that case and without drastic changes in the international political reality, I'd wager that the ones who can make their claim to stick would be the UN permanent council members, because that's how they got in there in the first place.