| Personal background |
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Originally from the UK, I now live in New Jersey, USA. I work on next-generation communications technology based on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol).
I started my career as a software engineer but quickly realized that I was hopeless at it (my college professors tried to warn me...). I am now a business manager responsible for bringing next-gen. communications products to market. It’s an honest living; it allows me to justify my career choice; it fulfills my interest in technology and, most importantly, allows more talented people to focus on building great software.
What is a (quasi) communications technologist and SETI hobbyist is doing in New Jersey? Well (if I need a reason) it is where Edison, Jansky and Einstein lived and worked, where the transistor was invented and where C, "C " and UNIX were created.
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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It seems unlikely that extraterrestrial life does not exist: we have already found initial evidence of the possibility of it in the last 30 years. The key questions are: where we will find it; in what forms and if we will find evidence of technologically advanced civilizations.
I run SETI@home because I find the general concept of public participation massively distributed processing very interesting, so I would probably run it if it were doing more mundane work. Furthermore, since I am convinced that the probability of the existence of extra terrestrial life is high, being able to participate in this project (at little or no cost) and make a potentially large contribution to humanity is very satisfying.
It is not clear to me that SETI@home can succeed in finding technologically advanced civilizations; the physical limitations of radio waves make them a poor choice of communications medium. However, it is possible that advanced civilizations would use radio waves to try to communicate with less advanced civilizations. This scenario makes the project worthwhile - if someone is trying to communicate with us, then we can only benefit by paying attention.
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