Reconstructed setting· The columns of time
The network
1950 → Today
A lit night skyline with a satellite crossing above it. The band in which more than half of humanity became urban and the sky acquired machines.
What the evidence shows
The lights are literal: more than half of humanity has lived in cities since about 2007, and a lit city is visible from orbit, which is a genuinely new thing for a planet. The satellite has been there since Sputnik 1, launched on 4 October 1957, and its descendants are why the night sky is the only part of this backdrop that someone from the previous band would not recognise. In these 76 years the population goes from 2.5 to 8.2 billion.
Bounds and conventions
The most recent backdrop is the hardest to draw without editorialising, because it is the only one whose viewers live inside it. It shows a city at night, which is where most people now live and where only a minority lived when the band opened.