Good luck to METI and SETI. The latter (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been listening for messages from outer space, and the former (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) wants to send messages to Proxima b, the closest Earth-like extra-solar planet. SETI can’t positively identify as signs of messaging any radio signals it has received so far, and chances are that another intelligence’s discovering us through our communication will come too late for us to know. What about Voyager I and II and Pioneer 10 and 11? Those spacecraft are at the edges of and beyond our Solar System. Again, chances of their discovery by an alien intelligence are less than your finding a pea hidden on Earth.
How does it feel to be living in a modern Strongilovouni? Where? Thessaly. Recently studied, the ancient and forgotten city lay buried beneath sediment of the Enipeas River for about twenty-three centuries. The city existed, fell into ruin, and passed from human memory. Sounds like a science fiction tale often told, a story of an intelligent race long gone, one that left some remnants of its existence for aliens to find, much like the old cult classic movie Forbidden Planet or like the more recent movie Total Recall in which humans are the “aliens” that discover remnants of ancient civilizations.
Save that CD you made a few years ago; save those pictures and videos. Aliens will want to decipher them as they work diligently to understand the remnants of your civilization. Build any big walls or structures? They last a long time; just look at the Great Wall of China and at Hadrian’s Wall. Walls at Strongilovouni have also survived in part. Of course, in time walls will fall into decay, and sorry to say your pictures will fade just as your digitized stuff will succumb to breakage, magnetic disruption, or burial.
Assuming Proxima b residents, having received a message from Earth, have both the technology and desire to visit us, we still have a problem of communication. We won’t be here when they arrive. In fact, centuries from now, we will be as lost to memory as the people of Strongilovouni are to us. Sure, we have some hints that tell us about Strongilovouni’s general makeup and culture, but not much more. We don’t know anything about any Strongilovounian in particular. No one left a CD, pics, or video.
Communication is two-way. Neither discovering nor deciphering is communicating, but archaeology is valuable as a partial avenue into the minds of peoples no longer capable of representing themselves. The people of SETI and METI know this, but it hasn’t discouraged them from trying to communicate across time and space. Their efforts, praiseworthy in the eyes of many, still have multiple problems, such as sending a signal to a distant world that is moving through the galaxy. To what part of the sky does one aim the message, where the object now appears or where it will be in, say, 4.2 years? And how does the distant intelligence know when or where to send a reply?
What if we put as much effort in trying to communicate with the neighbors we know in our own Strongilovouni? Is it not interesting that we are both looking for messages and sending messages to other worlds when we haven’t mastered communicating on our own? In a sense, on our own planet we are surrounded by aliens, beings we only partially know or understand. They are building “cities” that won’t last long, but here’s our chance to understand some intelligence before time covers its place in the sediment of forgetfulness.
How does it feel to be living in a modern Strongilovouni? Where? Thessaly. Recently studied, the ancient and forgotten city lay buried beneath sediment of the Enipeas River for about twenty-three centuries. The city existed, fell into ruin, and passed from human memory. Sounds like a science fiction tale often told, a story of an intelligent race long gone, one that left some remnants of its existence for aliens to find, much like the old cult classic movie Forbidden Planet or like the more recent movie Total Recall in which humans are the “aliens” that discover remnants of ancient civilizations.
Save that CD you made a few years ago; save those pictures and videos. Aliens will want to decipher them as they work diligently to understand the remnants of your civilization. Build any big walls or structures? They last a long time; just look at the Great Wall of China and at Hadrian’s Wall. Walls at Strongilovouni have also survived in part. Of course, in time walls will fall into decay, and sorry to say your pictures will fade just as your digitized stuff will succumb to breakage, magnetic disruption, or burial.
Assuming Proxima b residents, having received a message from Earth, have both the technology and desire to visit us, we still have a problem of communication. We won’t be here when they arrive. In fact, centuries from now, we will be as lost to memory as the people of Strongilovouni are to us. Sure, we have some hints that tell us about Strongilovouni’s general makeup and culture, but not much more. We don’t know anything about any Strongilovounian in particular. No one left a CD, pics, or video.
Communication is two-way. Neither discovering nor deciphering is communicating, but archaeology is valuable as a partial avenue into the minds of peoples no longer capable of representing themselves. The people of SETI and METI know this, but it hasn’t discouraged them from trying to communicate across time and space. Their efforts, praiseworthy in the eyes of many, still have multiple problems, such as sending a signal to a distant world that is moving through the galaxy. To what part of the sky does one aim the message, where the object now appears or where it will be in, say, 4.2 years? And how does the distant intelligence know when or where to send a reply?
What if we put as much effort in trying to communicate with the neighbors we know in our own Strongilovouni? Is it not interesting that we are both looking for messages and sending messages to other worlds when we haven’t mastered communicating on our own? In a sense, on our own planet we are surrounded by aliens, beings we only partially know or understand. They are building “cities” that won’t last long, but here’s our chance to understand some intelligence before time covers its place in the sediment of forgetfulness.
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