From the Cold Earth: BP’s Broken Well, Streaming Live

This article looks at the peculiar way the live streaming video of BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico connected its viewer, in the spring and summer of 2010, to a part of the earth where he or she could not be—where nobody could be. Human beings had the power to cause the catastrophe but did not have the power to plunge to the Gulf floor to make it stop. The part of the earth (the greater part) that, in advance of environmental disaster, is already hostile to human life is the ironic home toward which all televisual media turn us; the alienness of our home planet is the underlying message of these media. But whereas the TV news keeps that message buried under blanket coverage, the live streaming video of BP’s broken well brought it clearly into view.