03 MAR 2014 by ideonexus

 The Silence of the Universe is Significant

Geoff Marcy, the University of California at Berkeley astronomer who has found scores of exoplanets, and who has diligently searched for signs of anything artificial in the data, says the silence is significant: “If our Milky Way Galaxy were teeming with thousands of advanced civilizations, as depicted in science-fiction books and movies, we would already know about them. They would be sending probes to thousands of nearby stars. They would have a galactic Internet composed of laser beams a...
Folksonomies: extraterrestrial life
Folksonomies: extraterrestrial life
  1  notes

The fact that we can't detect anything out there means there may be nothing to detect.

03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 "Net of a Million Lies"

And so it went. Tens of thousands of messages, hundreds of points of view. It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.
  1  notes

Vinge's galactic internet is a rumor mill, predicting the emotionally-charged falsehoods and tribalism that would appear on today's internet.