The impact of contact
Abstract
Scenarios of the impact on human society of radio contact with an extraterrestrial civilization vary widely between paranoid projections that contact with advanced extraterrestrials would quickly devastate the human spirit, and pronoid predictions that the extraterrestrials would be so advanced that they would swiftly and benevolently lead us into a golden age. Such extreme pronouncements exaggerate the probable speed and magnitude of the impact of radio contact in that they conflate technical and cultural understanding, and ignore the problem of inter-civilizational comprehension. Judging from the record of cultural misunderstanding between closely related human groups, comprehending a totally different civilization light years away, and absorbing the meaning of whatever messages were sent, would be a slow and tedious process calling for the efforts of specialists from many disciplines as well as the SETI scientists now engaged in the search.
- Publication:
-
Acta Astronautica
- Pub Date:
- 1990
- DOI:
- 10.1016/0094-5765(90)90137-A
- Bibcode:
- 1990AcAau..21..117F