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| Personal background |
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I am a professional mathematician - those words are usually enough to
kill all further conversation, but since this is text, I'll continue.
My interests professionally center around the application of category
theory ("abstract nonsense") to logic and theoretical computing.
Other passions: film (especially from the "classic era" of the 30's
and 40's), music (especially "early" - ie pre 1600, Bach, and the
Beatles), and of course my family. I teach junior college students -
an experience which is actually lots of fun, but I cannot resist
pointing out that frequent contact with teens is a good incentive to
continue SETI@home ...
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I am completely agnostic about the existence of ET life, and doubt
we'll ever discover proof one way or the other, at least within the
foreseeable future, but that's no reason not to try. As a long-time SF
fan, I can dream, can't I?
As for our transmitting a beacon - I guess we already are (all those
Lucy reruns) - but something deliberate would help give them something
to aim at (in a friendly sense, I trust ...)
I run SETI@home mainly because I think the concept of distributed
computing in this fashion, with input from the "public", is perhaps
the most important concept that comes from this project. And it's fun
to think of collaborating on one of the most "pointless" scientific
projects of our era - and I am a firm believer in the value of
(seemingly) "pointless" scientific projects. Serendipity has been our
ally on many occasions in the past.
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