We Come In Peace: How About An Anal Probe?

Okay, you guys, this joke has gone far enough! There were no aliens! They didn't give me an anal probe and they can't control my mind!

- Cartman (South Park)

In this crazy mixed up galaxy, it's hard to know who's who, what's what and what THEY want. Of course, THEY can say the same, but the universal consensus apparently suggests that we are not the same. To be honest, we're not really sure who THEY are or if they even exist, but many folks are real nervous just the same.

There's been some discussion concerning a recent study that reviewed a number scenarios depicting the nature of contact with alien life forms, in other words, extra-terrestrials. The study basically assesses a variety of science fiction themes to reach some conclusion over what contact with extra-terrestrials might reap, and whether or not this is something we might actively want to be pursuing. Word making the rounds is that our ultimate fate may be decided by our galactic neighbors, possibly in the name of 'keeping the neighborhood safe'.

Ok, so everyone wants to know who or what might be lurking out there in the great galactic void, and of course, what their intentions are. According to the study, a review of science fiction themes reveals the following scenarios:

• Galactic Bullies: These types want our 'shit', be it our planet's natural resources, ourselves in the form of slave labor or just our physical location in time and space, as suggested in the classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in which Earth is to be destroyed due to the expansion of a “a hyperspace bypass”. Yes, humanity has less intrinsic value than interstellar infrastructure.

• Join The Galactic Club: Anyone who has ever watched Star Trek knows abut 'the Federation of Planets', a sort of utopian 'NATO' of species, all working for the common good. They learn from us, we learn from them, and everyone holds hand while singing “Joy To The World” and hugging trees.

• You've Got Cooties: This scenario basically suggests that the intelligent life that thrives amongst the stars basically just wants to stay out of our way and keep its distance. This could stem from the fact that we are too barbaric in nature, or perhaps because we have no respect for our environment ... or simply because some of us really think Sarah Palin should be President.

Sarah Palin For President

The study concludes that we really don't know what route contact with aliens may take, because we just don't know too much about extra-terrestrial species. Basically, it offers that nothing from nothing reaps nothing … but we should be careful anyway, and not assume one way or the other. In other words: more research is needed.

I find it interesting that our search for what lies 'out there' always begins with a look within ourselves. Given the eccentric and egocentric nature of the human psyche, I'm not sure if this always a good idea. Moreover, a fundamental flaw of the above mentioned study is that it makes no mention of Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica … but that's another issue.

Early science fiction often applied humanoid features to visitors from outer space. No one could really fathom an extra-terrestrial that looked like a turnip or a licorice whip. Similarly, the tenements of Judea-Christian religions suggest that the nature of God is non-corporeal and possessing of ways beyond our comprehension. Dogma suggests that we need take a blind leap of faith when it comes to doing the Lord's work. Nevertheless, despite this caveat, our belief structure continues to cling to the notion that God created man in 'his' image. Logic would dictate that the Klingons, deferring to their own religious beliefs, might beg to differ. Ah, but then logic was never our strong point, was it? I think Mr. Spock would concur … but then again he was half-human, wasn't he?

Certainly contact with an extra-terrestrial species, or a galactic club of life forms, would indelibly leave its mark on our collective 'state of being' yielding a plethora of spiritual, physical, psychological disconnects. It would definitely 'blow our minds'. Still, we all have expectations of what a 'Close Encounter of the 3^rd Kind' may present. Conjecture runs rampant. Some have grand visions, others have delusions of grandeur … others still are worried about an anal probe. Regardless, should such an event occur, I think we need to rethink our thinking.

Relatedly, a theme in some of my posts concerns defying the expectations of others and, of course ourselves. I think there's a connection here to be made in the sense that we need to be more open minded when considering possible contact with 'visitors'. They may not necessarily come in peace or in war … they may simply come for the food. Moreover, not everything in life revolves around anal probes or inter-species breeding. 'E.T.' may simply want try a chicken and ribs combo.

We are basically social creatures, and curious ones at that. We dream about voyages to “seek out new life and new civilizations”. We also have a daredevil penchant “to go where no man has gone before”. Still, it is often said that 'curiosity killed the cat'. In this vein, since we really don't know the nature of any other galactic beast, other than ourselves, I'd suggest it's one thing to contemplate contact with alien life who happen about our planet, but it's another to consider beginning a marketing campaign.

In the early 70s, a Canadian progressive rock group called 'Klaatu' formed, naming themselves after the alien protagonist in the film The Day The Earth Stood Still. In 1976, they released a neat and nifty song called "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft". The songs suggests the declaration of a 'World Contact Day' in which humans would collectively communicate a telepathic the message to all possible extra-terrestrials that “we are your friends”. I often marveled at such a wonderful concept fostering the idea that humanity could be united in such a common goal. Nevertheless, the prolific message of this song was lost on the public who were more concerned at that time with trying to confirm rumors that the  musicians were actually the Beatles reformed and recording under a pseudonym. Alas, I have no doubt that should an emissary from another planet arrive, some fool would jump from our welcoming committee to ask if Elvis were alive and living on Uranus!

Since we are obviously a threat to our selves, we are certainly a threat to others. In this sense, some suggest we should 'keep a low profile' and not overly advertise our presence in the cosmos. It's been suggested that programs such as METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) that aim to actively contact intelligent aliens may yield less than stellar results. This example of 'nervous Nelly' thinking may have some merit amongst those with clenched butt cheeks. Still, I like to think that throwing caution to the wind is the only way we may be someday be able to overcome the “the Great Silence in the Universe”. After all, isn't that the nature of social networking platforms like Facebook and MySpace? So indeed, I say we should say "hey!" and let our presence known! Lord knows, I could use a few more followers on my Twitter account.

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PS. Thanks for reading. Are you nervous at the prospects of contact with alien species? Do you think such beings would be benevolent or malevolent? Do you think we should sending greetings into outerspace, or are you more concerned that Sarah Palin might jump into the US presidential race? Let me know by commenting below.

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Links / Reference / Trackbacks / Pingbacks:
http://paleblueblog.org/post/9110304050/some-important-points-of-clarification
http://flickr.com/photos/91351004@N00/1300319055
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Klingon_female_model.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Alien.png

Google Plus Equals SkyNet: Social Networking And World Domination

Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

- Hal9000 computer (Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey)

“Talk to me!”, says I.
“Who are you?”, says the stranger.
“I am no one!”, says I.
“Sorry, I haven't got time for your pain”, says he shuffling away. Or was it a she?

So have you been invited to join Google+ yet? As of this writing, I haven't, and it's probably a good thing, too, because I can only generate so many social niceties per day, certainly not enough to spread around to all the social networking platforms that currently exist in cyberspace.

As I wrote in another post, I 'did' MySpace, now on autopilot, and I currently 'do' Facebook. I also use Twitter and share my comments on the nonsensical news of the day there (follow me, follow me). But in terms of conversation, there's not much happening there. Yes, in other words no one will talk to me. Does that phase me, you ask? Not in the least. Though I might confess to being a bit irked.

Now I was told by a Twitter expert, who is wise in the ways of social media, that I needed to 'start talking' if I wanted to get the party started. I understand completely. Just as it is with real social circles, some folks are reticent to engage in pleasantries with someone who talks to himself.

“Hello!? Hello!? I'm alive over here!”, I might tweet. The silence is deafening. Not even a retweet.
An email soon finds it's way to my inbox with the subject line reading “follow me and I'll follow you”. It's from 'dudecashwise362'. “Where are we going?” I reply in an email. No response.

Ok. you all know how it goes. Having something interesting, witty, or life affirming to say won't get you very far in social networking, unless you are a celebrity and don't mind commenting in passing on what you ate for brunch. Though, if you really are a celebrity, you’d no doubt have someone else do the tweeting  for you, and eat your lunch for you, as well (#winning).

If you are a 'no one', however, then there is only so much self abuse you can take by 'tweeting' to a flock of 'we don't care' celebrity stools. Yes, celebritism is alive and well, and those who worship every celebrity dropping certainly have no time for you.

So, the big question, however, is do I really want to get the 'party' started, especially with celebrity intensive zombie types? I must confess that these days I'm not much in the 'party' mood; I'm in the writing mood. So, do I really want to put my creative energies into blithering banter, glib chitchat and all manners of cyber persiflage? I'd say no. If I did, I'd probably have no time for my blog ... which most likely no on reads, except for 'search bots'. Anyway, zombies, by the way, are not really big on conversation; they just want to eat your brain … which leads me to my next point.

Google+ makes me nervous. Honestly. Use of an arithmetic function seems less social oriented and more machine language enamored. Machines are not social creatures. They interface. Not very sexy.

We've seen this before with Google Wave and Google Buzz. If anything, Google+ seems a bit more insidious, especially in that Google already it's spindly talons into all forms of online services. Yes, Google's aim is to make this personal. It doesn't want to own just your email, blogs, videos, RSS feeds, surf and search habits, cloud based personal and business documents, and both computer and mobile telephony operating systems. It wants the whole ball of wax: your online social identity and that of our friends and business colleagues, as well as theirs, and theirs, and theirs, and so on, and so on, and so on. It also wants control of your applications and hardware. Sound familiar?

Cloud based computing? Give me a break! It seems that Google's intentions have gone far beyond creating its own version of George Orwell's dystopian society in his novel 1984. Pulling a “Big Brother is watching you” number on us by keeping up under surveillance and controlling our 'freedom of  choice' via media streaming (Youtube and Adwords, for example) is bad enough. But I suspect, that Google want's even more... or is even more.

Some of you have seen films such as the Matrix (Keannu Reeves: Whoa!) or the Terminator (SkyNet). Maybe you've watched Battlestar Galactica on TV and are weary of 'cylons' lurking around every corner. Remember HAL9000, the paranoid and homicidal sentient computer from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey? What about the supercomputer, WOPR, from the film Wargames? I could even mention an odd film called Demon Seed, but that would be really perverse!

In these films, the names change and the plots may be different, but the one salient feature these all have in common is the subjugation of the human masses by an authoritarian body that knows all via technology.

Is Google a burgeoning SkyNet? Is Google really just taking names, numbers, and personal data, biding its time under false pretenses, waiting for the moment to attack?

My fellow 'Netizens', now is the time for a preemptive strike against what is no doubt some artificial intelligence lurking in the Google controlled and operated web clouds. Now is the time to send a clear message to all of humanity to pull the plug on Google and it's designs for world domination. At the very least, tell Google+ that we don't want it horning in on our social circles. I'd tell you to write your congressman, but he's probably too busy sexting someone.

Lord! And they say the hackers are the bad guys! (Cue the Love Boat theme)....
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PS. Thanks for reading. Seriously,  what is your take on Google+? Is it me or is Google really desperate here? Are you concerned about why you haven't received an invitation, or are you still trying to figure out what Tumblr is? Let me know.

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Social Networking: An Exercise In Irrelevancy

In the 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist, a priest asks the demonic squatter "who are you?" The pea soup spewing demon replies "I am no one."  Of course, the demon was speaking backwards so it took Father Damian some time to understand that it wasn't speaking in tongues.

By the same token, it took me awhile to understand that Twitter is a bit more than a poor man's Facebook. In fact, as I now understand it, it's even more than a generic equivalent of the old MySpace Status Update feature. Yes, I now clearly see that the pseudo psychosocial role it plays is to confirm what apparently everyone else seems to know ... except you and me. And, that is that we are completely irrelevant.

Ok, I know the truth hurts, but let's face it, it's true. Unless your last name is Lohan, Hilton, Spears, Pitt, Jolie or Bieber, you are no one - especially if you have ever attempted to conquer the Triple Crown of social networking platforms: MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. If you don't believe me or refuse to admit to your social irrelevancy, consider the following evidence submitted for your review (tick all that apply):

MySpace: Keeping Up With The Olsen Twins

You sign up for MySpace and quickly discover that the rules of the game seem to be that the one with the most friends wins. You try valiantly and vainly to keep up with the a host of celebrities and other strangers who keep asking you to "add them" feigning the promise of real kinship, but offering only a once off "thanks for the add". You eventually begin to wonder how the public at large might perceive the long parade of these sentiments in your comment stream. In time, after approximately hitting the 2543 friend  mark, it dawns on you that your actions have revealed you to be nothing more than a pathetic voyeur-like slug trolling for some confirmation of your cyber existence.

At some point, you most likely attempt to show your static legion of who's noones that you are a "people person" worth getting to know. And so, under the delusion that positive energy attracts positive energy, you begin updating your status with daily positive affirmations such as "I feel great today!" or "Happy to be alive!" or "Today, I'm walking on sunshine!" A response to your pie in the sky proclamations  include a note from "The Raging Prune Spirits", a Psychobilly music band outside of Saskatchewan, inviting you to come "punch the monkey" with them at "Manvir's Hideaway". Another response comes in the form of a pugnose Pekingese dog sporting a yellow bow named "Barf" that comments "better than walking on what I left behind". Hope begins to build with the arrival of a message in your inbox with the title: "You Are The Best!" .... it's from a dead rockstar you admired exclaiming how much he values your and his other 120,642 friends' friendship, while also reminding you that he has a new "Best Of" collection out on iTunes.

Disheartened, you eventually abandon updating your MySpace page. Even three months later when you check in to see if in your absense you were missed, you discover to your chagrin that only Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrtets, America's Next Top Model, Judd Jugmonger, Glenn Beck and a friend of Shane Dawson wants to be your friend... so does a Faust quoting cyborg named "Kilroy 3.0".

Facebook: Losing Face

You decide to start from scratch with more realistic goals. You gingerly agree to let Facebook's "Friend Finder" appliation access your email contacts. Word goes out heralding your savvy arrival in this new social arena. You end up on several spam lists. However, you are pleased to learn that several old classmates have begun to populate your friends list... as well as some supposed friends of friends of colleagues of theirs. Someone you don't know sends you an e-heart or an e-cocktail. Things are looking up! Someone invites you to join their Mafia Family or to play Texas Hold'em Poker or Scrabulous with them. Another asks you to join a cause such as the "Pardon Jim Morrison" campaign. Someone admonishes you to "Like" Jimmy Dean Sausage. A wave of Farmville pleas assail your "Wall" imploring you to adopt a little albino piglet with 3 legs and an overactive bladder that has strayed into their e-pasture. Someone offers you some seed and fertilizer.

You decide to just be yourself. You post pictures of your desk, your lunch, your new cummerbund and your face in the bathroom mirror. You comment on the weather and post links to some articles on dieting, IBS, and Punxsutawney Phil, or perhaps Lindsay Lohan. You take a quiz such as "which Star Wars character are you?" You discover you are Yoda ... or worse, a Jawa.

You post profusely to the 28 friends you have. The final straws break: A distant relative tags you in an old photo taken of you when you were 4 ... sitting naked on a child potty shaped like a turtle; you look quite dismayed from all the pressure. One of your old classmates that you had long forgotten suddenly "pokes" you and then posts on your wall "Hey Cochise! Still got that rash?". You begin to understand why the term "unfriend" was confirmed as an official word by the lexicographers' syndicate.

Twitter: I'm only here to follow...

You join, this time ignoring the request to use yet another Friend Finder application. You decide you will use Twitter to stay up on news trends and important people. You follow Al Gore, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawkins, Anderson Cooper, Roland S. Martin, Michael Moore, your local congressman,  Larry King, and eventually, Lindsay Lohan. You decide you won't tweet. A month later you you sign up for an auto posting service that tweets daily musings such as "Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true" or "The two most common elements in the world are hydrogen and stupidity" ... or "I'm walking on sunshine".

You struggle to find twitter links to your old MySpace friends. You are now following 1089 people. There are 8 following you. With effort, you reach 15. The next morning you're back to 8. These loyalists include AllRecipes.com, KFC,  Health Pass USA, Dunkin Donuts, Judd Jugmonger and someone named PayDayJunkie. You pay $39.95 to a discreet India based service that promises to deliver 1500 followers within 1 week. They deliver. Half are 15-year old girls from Singapore and South Korea. The other half host screen names such as Hitome93, BenDover21, GagaLady1115, Pazuzu, or "pooping13056".

TWIT

Facebook it, you are not a social butterfly. These creatures instinctively know how to flit, flitter, tweet and twitter regardless of their spacial or temporal dimension, be it cyber space or real space. Everyone else just gets sucked into the isolating void of reality where MySpace is no place, Facebook is faceless, and Twitter has an overcapacity of auto-tweet-bots.

At best, social networking services distract us from the reality that we have nothing to do or no other real distractions of merit.  At worst, they are mind numbing psychological reinforcers of the reality that some of us ... are just completely irrelevant.

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PS. Thanks for reading. Have you visited My-Vacant-Space recently? If you do ... look me up, PLEASE!!!


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