Friday, February 01, 2008

A playlist for the aliens

They're broadcasting Across The Universe into space (the original Beatles song, not the movie).

Very appropriate from the point of view of us down here on Earth, I freely admit, but is that really the best thing to send to the aliens? A lot of the meaning is in the lyrics, so they would have to be able to manage the concept of music, then recognize the many different instruments, then recognize that some of the sound is vocal, then have the concept of verbal language, then work out the English language except that one sentence is Sanskrit. I think even Hoshi Sato would have trouble working out a language if the occasional sentence was in another language. Plus, if it's the recording I think it is, there are some birds and stuff in the recording, which is non-linguistic (or, if it's linguistic it's another language completely irrelevant to the message) vocalizations from a whole nother species! That's an awful lot for the aliens to work out!

Better music to broadcast out to the aliens would be something with no lyrics, only one instrument, and a very clear structure so they can see there's intelligence behind it. Goldberg Variations anyone?

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