Posthuman Blues

Reading Ronald Bracewell's "The Galactic Club: Intelligent Life in Outer Space." He suggests that advanced ET civilizations will send out a diaspora of probes to neighboring star systems to monitor potential emerging technical civilizations. Like other SETI theorists, his definition of "technical" seems to be "able to transmit radio signals into space, intentionally or inadvertantly." I have no fundamental problem with that. But the probes he envisions are hopelessly low-tech. They're little more than souped-up versions of Pioneer 10. He assumes that they will perish relatively soon because the hypothetical alien project coordinator will be tied to a strict budget (shades of NASA's "faster, better, cheaper"...) and that quantity will prevail over quality. For a relatively original thinker, Bracewell waxes disturbingly anthropomorphic.

His interesting contribution to the SETI argument is that his probes will be interactive to some degree. After one of them picks up on our radio signals, it "echoes" a reply, instigating a simple dialogue from which we can ultimately learn where the probe came from. Then, presumably, we will turn our radio dishes to the star of origin and trasmit a reply. But why limit his probes to kindergarten radio exchanges? Why not self-replicating probes built to last millions of years? Why not true thinking intelligent probes able to carry the genetic templates of its designers, "telepresence" machines capable of colonizing the space around the target planet? (Frank Tipler entertains similar ideas in "The Physics of Immortality.")

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Internet buzz-words are the linguistic versions of Bruce Sterling's user-friendly touchy-feely "blobjects." Yahoo. Google. Blogger. It's hipsterized baby-talk, fun to pronounce. Ridiculous-sounding names like this are like the flimsy translucent casing around a disposable calculator, rendering ubiquitous tech into unthreatening conceptual baubles.