[extropy-chat] Software firm joins search for aliens.

[Terry W. Colvin]

Flying Saucer Review, Vol 49/1, Spring 2004, pp. 17&18

< http://www.fsr.org.uk >

Software firm joins search for aliens. But are they already here?
A special report compiled by FSR

The following story broke on 22nd of March 2004, and in some ways is very
surprising, for Microsoft should be well aware that in the next few decades
computers will be ready to take us on to the next stage of human, or
human-computer, evolution.  Soon, computers will be in a position - perhaps
with our help, or perhaps not - to take computing into realms that were
only recently considered science-fiction.  As a result, the subject of
consciousness -- and where we could put it -- should become much better
understood.  Futurologists believe that in the next 100 years or less,
computing will have the ability to transfer our consciousness into
software; or rather, into hardware-software, and/or energy fields.

Consequently, we should acknowledge the possibility that aliens more
advanced than us have already mastered techniques which will allow them
to perform what to us would appear to be magic.  They may be able to
communicate in ways far in advance of old-fashioned radio communication.
They may have transferred their consciousness into their environment and
the wider environment and, over millions or billions of years, involved
in many quantum leaps to something which will be completely foreign to
us and which we are unlikely to be aware of -- unless they occasionally
present themselves to us as 'aliens'.  Microsoft might do better putting
its money into research that looks for other modes of communication.

In parallel, less advanced aliens may be using techniques that we might
recognise as being something of alien origin.  These techniques may have
resulted in the wave of apparent alien technology-oriented sightings that
have persisted for the last 50 plus years.  I saw "apparent alien
technology" because that is not always how it appears.  We may be seeing
their software too.  That software would of course be non-physical and
might represent an alien intrusion into our space-time frame.  On the
other hand, some ufos may be physical craft from worlds that are not much
more advanced than ours, while others may represent an interaction --
intentional or otherwise -- with an intelligence millions or billions
of years ahead of us.

The search for alien radio transmission can therefore probably only lead
us to know of the existence of aliens that are at a similar technology level
to us.  By the time we get the signal, though, the species behind it may
have evolved considerably and be using other techniques, and/or expanding
its presence exponentially across our galaxy.

The problem any species has with developing computers is that progress
towards mega advanced computing -- involving perhaps a species-computer
'life form' -- can probably happen in quantum leaps very rapidly, so much
so that before they know it, they have something on their hands which they
had difficulty envisaging in the first place.  We may be only brief
decades away from that situation ourselves, or sooner if 'black' projects
are currently working on mega advanced computers.  We would be foolish
indeed if we presumed they were not.
PW, FSR.


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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