Speculations on First Contact

After watching the movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still", I could not help but keep revisiting the topic of alien encounters with the human race in the back of my mind. The topic of alien encounters is a very frequent one in science fiction and has been brought up countless times, both in novels and movies. However, I think novels tend to fare better than most Hollywood films in depicting the realism of possible alien encounters with mankind.

Most Hollywood films such as Starwars, Star Trek, Alien, Species and Predator tend to portray aliens as having humanoid bodies, having two arms, two legs, a head and body. The usual differences between humans aliens in such movies are the alien skin colour, number of limbs, eyes, etc. All these superficial differences reflect a lack of creativity. Even most other lifeforms on Earth such as insects and animals will look more different from humans than the aliens in the films. Or maybe the film producers want to cut costs by using human actors for the alien roles instead of creating robots or using computer animation.

The probability of any alien lifeforms resembling anything close to humans is extremely low, far lower than the probability of anyone striking the lottery consecutively for his/her entire life! Anyone who has read and understand the theory of evolution should come to this conclusion. Life on Earth is the way we know it because of eons of accumulated chance mutations which were then sieved out by natural selection so that only those best suited for the particular environment in the particular locales on Earth will thrive. The complex interplay of numerous factors in the evolutionary history of Earth is certainly not something that will likely be repeated elsewhere in the universe. As such, there is no reason to believe that life on another planet would take exactly the same evolutionary path of Earth life, even if the conditions are the same. Famed scientists Carl Sagan, Paul Davies and Richard Dawkins, as well as numerous others have written books on this topic and it is worth reading them.

The main problem why most people think aliens will look like humans or some other Earth-like creature might be due to our current narrow definition of life. Our definition of life is only based on Earth life, and is certainly not representative of life throughout the cosmos. Why must life be restricted to solid forms? It is physically sensible for alien life to manifest in other physical states such as liquid and gas. Or alien life may be non-coporeal and take on exotic forms such as being composed of pure energy or electromagnetic fields. Science fiction novels such as "2001: A Space Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke, "Beyond Infinity" by Gregory Benford have postulated such possibilities. Another hot favourite is that many scientist think that water is necessary for life and thus they focus their search for alien life to worlds which contain water. Water is a good solvent for many inorganic substances and has high heat capacity which allows the stabilization of temperature within a relative small range, as well as other properties which make it suitable for Earth life. Water may be necessary for Earth life, but why must this criteria apply to aliens too? There are other solvents which can dissolve many substances as well. It is high time we re-look at our current definition of life and update it, before we miss recognizing alien life in future space exploration missions.

Another point to consider is that of collective consciousness. Aliens could also behave more like a hive than as separate individuals. As such, any attempt to communicate with them may prove even more difficult, due to the different ways of thinking. Imagine what would a person say to an ant or termite hive. I suppose the natural tendency for humans is to look for the leaders in the alien race, but a hive has no leaders; the queen ant or termite does not give instructions to the other ants, each individual ant merely carry out its own job. When each eat follows its own simple set of 'instinctive instructions', the self-organised collective behaviour of an entire ant colony can be markedly different from that of the individual ant itself. Clearly, a single ant or termite may not be as intelligent as a human (then again it depends on our definition of intelligence), but an entire ant or termite hive is far from stupid. Just look at the engineering marvels such as 5 meter tall termites hives which African mound termites are capable of building. Hives follow a bottoms-up approach, in contrast to our usual top-down approach.

As a class 0 civilization, chances are that a more advanced civilization will make contact with us rather than the other way round. Furthermore, we have only started exploring space in the last few decades, and the cosmos being such a unimaginably huge space, it will probably take us eons to find signs of alien life, if there is any. Given that the universe is around 17 billion years old, it is plausible that there are much older and advanced civilizations out there among the stars other than ours. And they would probably have reached class 3 or even 4 if they can reach us on Earth. From the history of mankind, every time a more advanced civilization makes contact with a less advanced one, it almost always resulted in a war of civilizations with the more advanced one triumphing. The same may or may not occur with our contact with extra-terrestrial intelligences. We do not know yet. Even if the aliens came here with no intention of harm, I think the result would still very much turn out to be a war, due to the territorial nature of humans, a behavioral relict of our evolutionary past. We would probably be the first to attack the aliens. This is where the film " The Day The Earth Stood Still" is probably right. Perhaps precisely because of this, the aliens have kept themselves invisible from us on purpose, assuming that they exist and are benevolent. This is just one of the many theories behind the Fermi Paradox.
(I will probably write an article on the Fermi Paradox in the future. I think I shall stop here for now, I could go on non-stop on the topic of aliens.)

Thoughts will soon be secrets no more

It was reported that researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have succeeded in processing and displaying images directly from the human brain. The team has only managed to reproduce only simple images from the brain but they believe that the technology could eventually be used to figure out dreams and other secrets inside people's minds. (http://www.physorg.com/news148193433.html)

It seems like we have opened yet another Pandora's Box. The potential of technology which allows others to read people’s minds is simply mind-boggling and its potential dangers are anyone's guess. It is only a matter of time when such mind-reading devices become as ubiquitous as mobile phones. There will undoubtedly be useful applications of such technology such as in solving crime cases and creating drawings and animations directly by visualizing them in the mind. However, in such a future, personal thoughts will no longer be private anymore as our very last sanctuary of privacy is encroached upon.

Already there are companies which sell commercial brain-computer interfaces (BCI) products such as headphones, based on electro-encephalogram (EEG) technology. Such devices allow the user to control the computer using their thoughts alone; they could control the cursor on the monitor screen, a computer game character or even a robot in the real world. Such technology will make it possible for people who have lost their limbs or wheelchair bound patients to be replaced with robotic prosthetic limbs which can be controlled by their mind. In fact, there have already been patients fitted with such BCI devices such as blind people who have partially regained their sight using electrodes implanted into their visual cortex and linked to an external camera. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-computer_interface) With the aid of BCI devices, doctors will be able to perform surgeries with better accuracy for longer hours with less physical fatigue from their hands, and astronauts can manipulate tools and conduct delicate experiments in space more efficiently using thought-controlled robotic arms instead of their bulky spacesuit gloves. BCI devices can also contribute a positive impact in the education arena and will enhance the learning experience for students. Uses of BCI in treatment of psychological disorders such as depression, phobias and attention-deficit disorder are also possible. Other applications include marketing uses, advertising, consumer electronics, and entertainment.

In the near future, it is highly possible that there will be groups, organizations or even governments willing to utilize such BCI devices to control others as well. Just as we can control computers and robots using our thoughts, the reverse could probably happen also. The prophetic vision of the future portrayed by the film The Matrix might not be too far-fetched after all. Initially there might be many people resisting the use of such devices for ethical or personal reasons, but the inadvertent tide of science and technology will nevertheless remain an unstoppable force. I foresee a future where even normal people would fit themselves with such BCI devices to enhance their physical and even mental abilities. This may sound repelling to some right now but it may be perfectly acceptable to people of the future. People of the past may never have thought that our generation would be so dependent on electronic devices such as computers and mobile phones, where people carry them along everywhere they go, so much so that some of these devices have become something of an extra limb or appendage to us. It is only a matter of time before mobile communications technology and even computers become available as chips which can be embedded in our brains. There will be no need to carry mobile phones or laptops then, and we will not even need to talk to communicate for our thoughts can be directly transmitted to each another. Perhaps, that is how we will achieve extra-sensory abilities such as telepathy in the future.

BCI technology, as with many other nascent technologies, is progressing at a rate too fast for comfort for many and has engendered numerous ethical issues and controversies. We live in an age of rapid technological advances and must to learn to live with the ever-changing technologies that arise continuously. Technology is a double-edged sword. Will we lose our sense of identity and become mindless cyborgs immersed in the virtual world controlled by others or computers or will we be able to utilize and maintain control over technology for the greater good of mankind in our quest to achieve utopia?