Ever since the first Earthrise was witnessed – and photographed – by the crew of Apollo 8 on 24 December 1968, humankind has been fascinated by the new perspective that the “Earth selfie” lends to us. British author Julian Barnes describes it as a “psychic shock” in his book Levels of Life: “you put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed.”

The astronaut Edgar D Mitchell put it in more prosaic terms when he noted: “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say: ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch’.”

In space, nobody can see your screens – but they can make it on to your Twitter feed. Social media’s giant leap arrived on 12 May 2009 when Nasa astronaut Mike Massimino, aka @astro_mike, became the first man to tweet from space:

The selfie in space is perhaps the ultimate in one-upmanship: from Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev’s awe-inspiring spacewalk selfie –

– to Reid Wiseman’s “to earth with love” version –

– it’s hard to better someone who’s looking down on all of us. You can keep abreast of who’s currently orbiting the earth via Nasa’s helpful Twitter list astronauts in space now.

Canadian Chris Hadfield raised the bar with his globally retweeted rendition of David Bowie’s song, Space Oddity, recorded while he was literally “sitting in a tin can/Far above the world”:

Although now retired and fully Earthbound, Chris Hadfield still an active source of knowledge on all (dark) matters (@Cmdr_Hadfield). You can see his best moments here, our favourite being his weightless water selfie:

The psychic shock of seeing the Earth from the heavens can still stop us in our tracks – such as the views of the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis as viewed from the International Space Station as it passed overhead.

Where will it all end? Drones tweeting from deep space? It’s already happening: Nasa’s twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft are still sending the occasional missives via the @NASAVoyager account, such as the tweet below last December.

Guardian Live: Chris Hadfield will be talking about his life on the International Space Station and show the highlights of his photographs from space in two Guardian events. He will be in London on 7 December and in Bristol on 11 December.