Imaginative Cosmos: The Impact of Colonial Heritage in Radio Astronomy and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Charbonneau, Rebecca

doi:10.17953/aicrj.45.1.charbonneau

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Terrestrial installations of radio observatories and the land they can be situated on are contentious and in fact, the settler-colonizer narrative has been a persistent theme at places such as Sagan's Project Argus, the giant with hundreds of eyes as opposed to one, is comfortably positioned in remote New Mexico. It is as Rebecca Charbonneau writes "settled land which historically belonged to several Indigenous cultures" as a backdrop then whereby scholars have referenced the lineage of gender violence, rape, and stereotypes to have originated continuing a legacy of this from antiquity (Charbonneau, 2021). The Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico, and more recently the Australian and South African VLA projects have made this identity crisis ever more real when faced with indigenous heritage as a barrier to research.…”

Section: Reemergence Of the Golden Agementioning

confidence: 99%

“…De Witt Douglas Kilgore is not alone in his quest to understand how SETI and culture intertwine, Historians William Lempert and Rebecca Charbonneau chart the ambiguities that are present in such rhetoric about SETI and its research into interstellar communication. It harbored not a universality as some scientists had described, but rather made the time-held tradition of "first contact" into a metaphor for frontier and oriental colonialism (Charbonneau, 2021). It is no surprise that Issac Asimov did not write about aliens in his Foundation series, as the editor, John W. Campbell, did not want narratives about aliens overcoming humans.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When E.T. Encounters ‘psychohistory’: C/SETI, Public Policy in Space, and Radio Astronomy

Moore¹

2022

Proceedings of the 5th World Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities

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In 1960 Frank Drake began Project Ozma to collect deep-space radio transmissions and ignited decades of advanced research in the years following within a new field, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. This paper's research question addresses a similar topic: what was the origin of the idea of CETI, or "communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence," and what is its relationship to some motifs of the cultural Cold War? The history of CETI and the SETI Institute organization, have been intertwined almost exclusively with the practice of radio astronomy. This thesis delves into both the scientific and social implications of the emergence of the concept of CETI and explores new methodologies of communicating with hypothetical extraterrestrial intelligence through international collaboration on issues such as disaster, social law, economics, and predictive modeling. My findings pointed to a Diplomatic Revolution and revealed parallels between the SETI Institute's search for ET and popular science fiction social systems, where depictions of the search for extraterrestrials by late pulp-fiction era writers by the 1990s made communicating with ETs part of global diplomatic goals between the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc of nations. It was the carrying forward of the literary theme of "Future History" narratives that influenced the cultural Cold War by popularizing how authors, scientists, and the public could coordinate new diplomatic policies in anticipation of first contact.

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Section: Reemergence Of the Golden Agementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When E.T. Encounters ‘psychohistory’: C/SETI, Public Policy in Space, and Radio Astronomy

Moore¹

2022

Proceedings of the 5th World Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities

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SETI in 2021

Huston

Wright²

2022

Acta Astronautica

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Inferring their minds and analysing our beliefs: on the contribution of (exo)psychology to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

Döbler,

Carbon

2024

International Journal of Astrobiology

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Exopsychology is a sub-discipline of psychology concerned with how humans contemplateextraterrestrials as well as forming hypothesis about how these beings may think, feel and behave. While researching the former is undoubtedly a subject for empirical science, aspects of the latter remain uncertain. Given the contemporary scientific insight, it may still be possible to identify a set of cornerstones and eventually create a space of possible configurations of the extraterrestrial mind. Here, we identify three basic compatibility requirements: first, any form of life must navigate internal and external (environmental) demands and thus actively ensure the compatibility of its current state with the same demands. Second, any advanced cognitive development and the emergence of remotely detectable technosignatures require not only the relevant capabilities for manipulation but also compatibility with a permissive environment. Lastly, requirements also concern the compatibility of extraterrestrial thinking and behaviour with our search method. In its most basic understanding, search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) searches for something done by somebody. However, the meaning of this simple formula and the psychological theory behind it is underdeveloped. Hence, psychological aid is needed to assist SETI in its effort to reveal whether galactic information indicates the presence of a mere object or activity of an identified subject with whom humans may establish contact. The fact that people believe in and search for extraterrestrials emphasizes that psychology should pay attention to this domain of phenomena. Hence, different imaginations of the extraterrestrial, ranging from benign to cruel, from superior to equally developed, are briefly discussed regarding their emergence and function as coping and motivating mechanisms for the uncertain search.

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Imaginative Cosmos: The Impact of Colonial Heritage in Radio Astronomy and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Cited by 3 publications

References 13 publications

When E.T. Encounters ‘psychohistory’: C/SETI, Public Policy in Space, and Radio Astronomy

When E.T. Encounters ‘psychohistory’: C/SETI, Public Policy in Space, and Radio Astronomy

SETI in 2021

Inferring their minds and analysing our beliefs: on the contribution of (exo)psychology to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

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