ABSTRACT
Accounts of supercivilizations and contact with them have a long history in science fiction and have undoubtedly influenced progressive scientists who believe that mankind might one day benefit from such contact. But, like religious accounts of divine beings with superhuman knowledge and power, they ultimately refer back to terrestrial concerns. In fact, most accounts of SCs are manufactured by emphasizing one aspect of the technological developments achieved on Earth over others. Thus, for example, Kardaschev’s version of an advanced civilization emphasizes energy consumption and Dyson’s emphasizes demographic forces, the effect of which are demonstrably significant for terrestrial life. The entire SETI endeavour reflects interest in technological developments on Earth. Thus advances in radio astronomy since the Second World War prepared the ground for NASA and the SETI community’s microwave searches, while more recent developments in laser technology have encouraged expectations of an optical signal. There are other versions of extraterrestrial civilizations which emphasize aesthetic or spiritual qualities and consequently reject technology and the very idea of colonization and, like some of Earth’s societies, prefer to look inwards for salvation. One version of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization at work is Ferris and Bracewell’s idea of a network of self-replicating communicating probes. This clearly emphasizes current terrestrial interest in robots, artificial intelligence and the replication of cognitive skills such as knowledge and prediction. The information technology culture is also an influential factor in Scheffer’s theory of teleportation by information transfer. Even the wildest theories concerning UFO visits and government cover-ups are reflections of serious terrestrial concerns. They might be dismissed as the ravings of paranoid crackpots but in a deeper sense they give expression to a sound healthy scepticism in the face of an unholy and secretive alliance between governments, the military and the scientists who serve them.
