It ’s all well and good to go look for extraterrestrial being , but what are we going to say once we determine them ? A workshop at the University of Wyoming , “ Writing for an Extraterrestrial consultation , ” asks students how they would explain the human circumstance to interstellar visitors . More on the pedagogy of cross - species communications after the startle .
Jeffrey Lockwood , who teaches the course , plans to discuss the resulting whole kit at this September ’s SETI conference , “ Searching for Life Signatures . ” The students , some of whom are Wyoming natives , do from a variety of educational backgrounds , which have determine their response to the assignment :
Christine Ingoglia , a alum student who entered the university ’s Master of Fine Arts ( MFA ) program in creative writing in the Fall of 2007 , started with a basic verbal description of our coming into court : “ We bet like – two arms , two legs , head , torso , symmetrical . ” Similarly , fellow MFA pupil Meagan Ciesla ’s summary – “ We require food for thought , zephyr , water , and think we ’re the most intelligent ” – was reminiscent of a subject matter transmitted from the Arecibo radio scope in 1974 , which described the chemical basis of life on Earth , and establish a pic of only one planetary species : man sapiens .
Other messages compose that first day of class in Laramie were more philosophical . “ We are an adolescent coinage searching for our individuality , ” drop a line Ann Stebner , a aged English major completing a nipper in Environmental Values . “ We get laid our species ’ origin , ” wrote senior psychological science major Dana Rinne , “ but we fear individual end . ” Rinne , who plans to do graduate employment in social psychological science or cognitive psychology , described the course of study as an chance to contemplate the intersection point of ism , scientific discipline , and mind .
stack of schooling offer courses in extraterrestrial life , and a few even have burgeoning futurology programs . But with xenocommunications entering the course catalogue , can we wait more courses on how to engage the future ? Could transhuman subject area be next in the curriculum ?
Writing for an Extraterrestrial Audience[LiveScience ]
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