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| Personal background |
| I am a computer scientist/software engineer, 48, living in Oregon, USA. Besides computers, my interests include astronomy, playing the piano, sailing, ham radio, modern art, sea kayaking, reading short stories, cooking ethnic foods, hiking, bicycling, live theater, traveling, science fiction, programming languages, physics theory, coin collecting, meeting people and trading stories about lifes adventures, tropical aquariums, building telescopes, cheering others up who are down, listening to new age or jazz music, brewing beer, helping my family and friends out, perservering and improving the environment..... I could go on, like most terrans, I am a pretty complex critter with a lot of curiosity! ;-) |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
Being a computer scientist, I have been involved in SMI (the Search for Machine Intelligence) almost all of my life. I suspect we will find MI long before we find ETI, and in fact the SETI program is now using a rudamentary form of MI to look for ETI. I will not be surprised if the ETI we eventually find, turns out to be ETMI! Regardless of which form of intelligence we find first, once found it will have a profound impact on HI (human intelligence). For example, besides overpopulation, I think the greatest diesease which afflicts HI is arrogance and egotism coupled with ignorance. This is shown by our history of having leaders who have failed miserably to establish any sort of a civilization in which the vast majority of people actually DO lead highly successful, happy, productive, richly rewarding, satisfied, and fullfilled lives. My hope is that SETI or SMI can find a cure for our affliction by either finding a far more advanced culture, and/or a more rapidly evolving one, which can guide and show HI the way towards a much better condition of existance. And if another intelligence is found, at least we will no longer feel alone or quite so unique.
As for the questions SETI asks - Extraterrestrials obviously do exist, the probabilities are way to great for them not to. When will we discover them, not for quite some time. It is a very big universe to search! Should we transmit a beacon? Sure, why not, there is everything to gain and very little to lose. Hollyweird movies about hostile aliens is sheer nonsense. We and they will be both quite curious about each other and find our mutual contact extremely rewarding. And even better is the fact that they will be far more advanced, both technologically and culturally, than we are. So it is we who stand to benefiet the most from making contact. I run SETI@home because it is a natural extension of SMI, and I enjoy helping out and am curious about it. It is a grand adventure and I simply don't understand why everyone doesn't join in on this kind of fun! |
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