An eminently sensible article in today's New York Times from Seth Shostak, the Director of SETI and a tireless advocate for our continuing quest to find intelligent life beyond the Earth. But not just that: he's also been a leader in the continuing discourse of what each of the terms in the acronym "SETI" should mean: what kind of search? Where? And what should constitute "intelligence"? This time, he's weighing in on a debate over actively courting extraterrestrial neighbors by broadcasting transmissions into space. What should we say? And shouldn't we be more careful? Perhaps extraterrestrial intelligence will be less-than-impressed with the ravages that modernity and capitalism have wrought. Or perhaps they'll see our various weaknesses, and swoop down to attack! These arguments, Shostak suggests, have more to tell us about contemporary, Hollywood scripts than about the intentions of aliens, and he counters with another, su...
Occasional posts on anthropologically interesting science fiction, anthropological futures and my own future as an anthropologist.