Titled Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication and edited by SETI Director of Interstellar Message Composition Douglas Vakoch, the document draws on “issues at the core of contemporary archaeology and anthropology” to prepare us “for contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, should that day ever come.”
https://gizmodo.com/how-would-humanity-change-if-we-knew-aliens-existed-1522853799
https://gizmodo.com/congress-asked-some-really-weird-questions-at-the-alien-1580146591
https://gizmodo.com/14-intriguing-ways-we-could-detect-signs-of-an-alien-ci-1562193732
https://gizmodo.com/are-religious-beliefs-going-to-screw-up-first-contact-1574043211
Photo Credit:
Stephane Guisard/ESO
Addressing a field that has been dominated by astronomers, physicists, engineers, and computer scientists, the contributors to this collection raise questions that may have been overlooked by physical scientists about the ease of establishing meaningful communication with an extraterrestrial intelligence. These scholars are grappling with some of the enormous challenges that will face humanity if an information-rich signal emanating from another world is detected.
Among the book’s 16 chapters: Speaking for Earth: Projecting Cultural Values Across Deep Space and Time; Learning To Read:Interstellar Message Decipherment from Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives; and Mirrors of Our Assumptions: Lessons from an Arthritic Neanderthal. Sounds look good afternoon reading to us. Download the PDF here. For EPUB and MOBI formats, click here.
H/t BoingBoing
