The possibility of communicating with aliens raises one tricky question: what on Earth should we say to them?Most of the truly weird items on eBay's electronic shelves are either aberrant or tasteless. However, a recent item offered by Deep Space Communications Network, a Florida consortium of telecommunication engineers, exceeded even today's standards for the bizarre. The Cape Canaveral firm offered to broadcast a personal message to aliens. The deal was simple: the winning bidder would supply information that Deep Space Network would electronically encode and beam to the stars. This was everyman's opportunity to serve up an alien audience with personal poetry, photos of the cat, or anything else deemed worthy of galactic distribution. Surprisingly, the winning bid, at $1,225, came not from a flamboyant individual, but from Craigslist, an internet site that posts classified adverts. The ads include items for sale, pitches for romance, and listings of those seeking work.

Presumably, Craigslist felt that the chance of decent employment would be boosted if alien beings had access to earthly resumés. At last count, 36,000 ads had been queued for broadcast. My advice to the users of Craigslist is to keep your day job. The Deep Space Network broadcast is unlikely to be picked up by anyone - primarily because of its relatively low power and short duration. In any event, a response to your ad could arrive millennia in the future. Your job skills might erode before then.

View: Full Article | Source: The Guardian