Check out Stars in Their Eyes?, a research paper from the University of Geneva about why people run SETI@home.

Interesting read. Best do take an hour or more to sit down for it, it's not a book, but it's not short either.

I liked the quotes of people, like:

Hello, my name is Daniel [...]. I manage one IT company. I am a member of BOINC.SK crunching team. I love computers and nice girls. I don’t like buying with my woman :( ‒ Profile no. 32326

(Mind, the profile numbers aren't akin to the userIDs here!)

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I'll be able to read it only when I reach a higher level in English. But I downloaded that to my computer

Fascinating!
I better fill out a profile.
Especially since today is my 20th anniversary of continuous computation, as close to 24x7x365 as one can get in a normal household, on at least one computer, and at times more than 1.

As for me,
I wish to Know,
before I go.
If all of this amazing power sitting on my desk, which 99% of the time would be idle and lost,
then worp those crystals while I still have time!

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"Its not what the world holds for you. Its what you bring to the world."

Hi people,
my name is Markus from germany. Since i am a child, i want to know,from where do we come,who has created us,where do we go?? i am hunting the next WOW Signal!

There has to be an answer....far out.....i would love to visit arecibo new mexico and take a look into deep sky!!

we should more combine the awesome techniques with the KI.

i am really sure one day, our work is going to become a breakthru!!!!

Sometimes i have difficulties with my boinc manager program.Sometimes the manager stops i dont know why. i am a new member since january 12,2020!!

I use the boinc program in combination with the seti project!!

much regards to all!

and of course, i am open to all people, i would like to find more individuals like me here,who is searching after the wow signal,that the mankind could bring more further :-)

I am 44 years old but still a "young" man. doing shit,lol love the way to live :-))))
Markus1975

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Markus1975, Seti Support mit 6 Kernen und 12 threats für die, die es GANZ genau nehmen, ist das nun die richtige Bezeichnung ;-)))

I read it today, and it was pretty interesting. They did bring up some good points. I've noticed myself that there are two main groups here on the forums: "Hardware Hackers" and "Space Buffs". The "Hardware Hackers" seem to best represent the "Number Crunching" forum. "Space Buffs" probably follow the "News" and "Seti@home science" forums. A lot of the article seemed to be based on very early forum posts and profiles with terms like "Pentium" etc. I still liked it, as it gave a good perspective on the varied audience of these forums.

I'm sure we are an experiment in a petri dish,
I just want to know what other creatures have been added to our dish?

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I run SETI to heat my apartment :)

Myself being a space buff S@H works for me.

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I run Seti@home because i think that finding exterrestrial life is the only way that humanity does not destroy them self. Our world leaders and the rich only care about greed and power but realiseing that we are not alone will change everything not only our religon but also our ecomny because in the vastness of space we only got eachother on this planet also it will kickstart our space travel development to a next level.

Keep chrunching we will find them

Regards,

Considering that the message is likely to be from "very ancient aliens," they might have some interesting things to say. For example, how to build a trans warp drive, etc.

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Hallo Marcus, ich heiße Stanislav Steinbach und komme aus Russland. Ich bin 30 Jahre alt und stimme dir voll und ganz zu. Ich bin sicher, dass unsere gemeinsame Arbeit eines Tages gelingen wird und wir das Signal einer anderen rationalen Zivilisation empfangen werden, und natürlich möchte ich, dass Menschen wie Sie, ich und Tausende von Gleichgesinnten mehr werden, ich glaube, dass wir Erfolg haben werden.

Because I like reading science fiction, I hope humans can find aliens in my lifetime

I just want to help them......

Initially myself & friends ran it so we could benchtest our PC's, I even ended up getting a dual CPU pentium II motherboard at one point, purely for SETI@home.

Now 20 odd years later I find myself doing the same again, I always did like the screensaver.

Running SETI to see if our generation is lucky enough to pick the lottery of discover alien intelligence signal...
I hope one day they will add screen saver for gpu tasks...

Sadly I've known a lot who have sadly passed away over all these year. :-(

I want to know what type of music they make. Plus I want to see the Moai dance.

An interesting and well-written paper. Funny to think that my own profile will have gone into the analysis: I never anticipated such a usage. Strangely enough, the research makes me feel better about the scaling-back of my involvement in the project. There was a brief time when I wanted to crunch for the sake of crunching, in pursuit of arbitrary milestones (get a million; get this computer to a million, etc.). Nowadays I’m less bothered about that and I’m starting to think we won’t find E.T. anyway... but this paper shows that it’s OK: nobody said we signed on for life and as I learn more about computers I find other uses for them. Also, worries about climate change make me feel twice as bad about my electricity usage.

I'm back after a long pause. Why now? Well, watching the new "War of the Worlds" series on epix had something to do with it. If you haven't watched the first episode yet, check it out. This really had an impact on me and left me believing more in the importance of the SETI@home project. I'm not promoting the series at all - however, it's the one thing that brought me back to this project. I'm hoping that one day SETI will make the ultimate discovery of which I hope to be a part of. I'm glad to be back!