I'm from Australia, am 46 years old and work in the IT industry. I enjoy snow and water skiing.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
1. Extraterrestrial life probably exists and we'll either stumble on to it or we may be contacted. Benefits and dangers remain to be seen.
2. Yes we should transmit a beacon.
3. Running SETI@home looked like an interesting thing to do. If we are going to find intelligent life - scanning for their transmissions is the most logical way to go about it.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.