Profile: RobG

Personal background
OK! I'm a 73 year old on-line newspaper Senior Editor and a Radio Program Producer/Editor. I have both Me.Ed and a B.Ed.

I am both retired and still working - many retirees will understand what i mean. My major hobby (apart from working on my Mac computers )is music. I play computer based synths and electronic drums, and have done so since 1976 (although it was with Analog Synths then), and, I have recorded a few albums.

I also enjoy Sci-Fi and some fantasy reading and as I said. 'puters. I have fove working one's in my home although one mac book pro is my wifes.!).

I also enjoy collecting and listening to music, have a vinyl collection of some 900 LP's, a large number of boxed sets, several hundred vinyl singles, 600 CD's, and currently over 300 CD's I have recorded and burnt myself after converting mp3's - ok! so it's not technically legal! My collection is very eclectic, covering be-bop and swing of the 40's, through almost any noteworthy 50's R&R, R&B, Western Swing, Rockabilly etc, through the 60's, 70's, 80's, but on the thin side of 90's , as it became less and less music, and more and more something other than music.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
Of course extraterrestrial life exists! The question really is in what form, and whether or not we will ever make contact. It's a very big universe out there, certainly big enough to contain more than one form of life, but maybe too big for contact.

If contact is made then there will be both benefits and dangers. All we have to do is to examine the benefits and dangers of contact with other races during our own discovery of our own planet. Attitudes, values, morals, beliefs - they will all be challenged. Out of this comes growth and hopefully, growth in wisdom. Technological changes must also be affected, as contact between any two or more life forms from different planets will inevitably be based upon different technological discoveries.

We can't discount the possibility of contagious disease. We only have to use our own history, for example the transmission of smallpox and venereal diseases by Europeans during exploration, to see the potential for disaster. This naturally could be magnitudes worse when we deal with alien life-forms, but one thing I believe makes it inevitable is that our passion for discovery and need to learn about ourselves and our place in universe will drive us to make such contact.

We must also transmit a beacon. I don't understand at the very least why every craft that leaves this planet as part of scientific work doesn't have a message inscribed on a plate within it. The odds of contact by this means are very remote, but the likelihood of contact being made possible is certainly increased by doing this. In some ways our conventional earth side broadcasts are already providing a beacon, but why not also transmit an invitation. Surely any form of life intelligent enough to make contact would do so for reasons other than good old Earth paranoia of conquest.

I use my computer for processing SETI@home data because it costs me nothing and I am making a contribution to a very important project. Without SETI@home, we may never know!
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