Perhaps the largest conceivable revolution in 
information occurred on October 17, 1957, when 
Sputnik created a new environment for the planet. 
For the first time the natural world was completely 
enclosed in a man-made container. At the moment 
that the earth went inside this new artifact, Nature 
ended and Ecology was born. “Ecological” thinking 
became inevitable as soon as the planet moved up 
into the status of a work of art.

G.E. Stearn, “A Dialogue—Marshall McLuhan and 
G.E. Stearn,” in McLuhan: Hot & Cool , edited by G.E. 
Stearn, (New York, 1967), p. 265.