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| Personal background |
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| Born in 1934 and raised in London, England, I moved with my family to the States in 1966. My wife, Sue, and I now have three married sons, and four grandsons. I am a retired Systems Engineer and for a dozen years or so I ran my own consulting and training business. I co-authored two quite successful books on SE (see http://www.psare.com). My main pastimes now is music - I played violin as a teenager, then switched to guitar, playing and singing folk music and playing rhythm guitar with a dance band. For several years in the 70s, I studied classical guitar - an extremely difficult instrument. I also compose and arrange, and I now sing with a symphony chorus and a Barbershop chorus, and make Barbershop arrangements (see http://home.earthlink.net/~hatley). Another great interest is physical fitness - speed-walking, cycling, snow shoeing, and cross-country skiing. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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| I have known about SETI@home for a long time, but finally got around to participating in 2001 when it was mentioned in a Scientific American article (I've been an avid reader of that magazine for many years). Since we live on a tiny planet orbiting an unremarkable star in a fairly ordinary galaxy, and since there are billions of other galaxies - ordinary and otherwise - it is almost inconceivable that we are the only intelligent life in the universe. Whether we will discover EI is less likely, but it\\'s worth trying if for no other reason than curiosity. But if we do discover EI, we might learn more about the creation and existence of life and about the universe. The chances of any negative impact from such a discovery - like encountering hostile beings - is very remote: They would almost certainly be too far away for the beings or their weapons to reach us. We should definitely transmit signals into space for EI to receive: All the reasons for looking for EI apply in reverse to helping them find us. We should send simple information about ourselves and our planet. I run SETI@home for all of the above reasons; in addition, the project is a great way to use available CPU time; I hope that in time the project\\'s scope will increase in bandwidth, search space, and participants. |
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