Yesterday a couple of the news sites had a piece on Lone Signal allowing anyone to transmit a text message to the stars.
“At Lone Signal, we believe that crowdsourcing messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) is the ideal approach to establishing a stable, cohesive, and well-resourced interstellar beacon on Earth.”
“Lone Signal allows anyone with Internet access to compose and transmit messages to strategically selected stellar systems.”
Right.
You think this is a good idea why?
You know for a fact that any sentient species on said planet is likely to be friendly? For all you know it’s home to the most aggressive species in four galaxies.
By the time the drunk teens and denizens of 4chan have submitted their crowdsourced free interstellar text, I suspect we’re doomed.
We’ll have threats, insults and porn. Intergalactic porn. Interspecies porn. No doubt porn outlawed across the civilised universe (of which, we’re not yet a part, for not being bright enough not to insult unmet aliens via text message). Scam attempts, and more insults. Presumably along with a few two for one offers from McDonalds and spam offers of help with Payment Protection Insurance claims.
Any receiving species is probably first going to react with humour and bewilderment at the backwards species sending these annoying little messages, then a few weeks later after the novelty has worn off, start getting really irritated by it – especially if it interferes with their tv reception, or happens to be on a frequency that interferes with their (unknown) biology.
Alternatively the reaction is “Yum! Lunch! Look, a planet full of food!”
Next step, then, is prepping and dispatching their finest faster than light planet destruction fleet.
So, “strategically selected” to get the species erased perhaps?
I guess we should hope that reading us some Vogon poetry before destruction of the planet will be optional?