This book is one of the most insightful and wide-reaching explorations of the subject SETI High-Information Contact. It presents a comprehensive review of the potential impact that contact with a highly advanced intelligence will have on human civilization.

The book provides a record and summation of the Hawaii seminar, as well as several insightful papers written by scholars who took part in those discussions.
Focused on long-range ramifications, the seminar emphasized the cultural impact several decades or centuries after dialogue between humankind and an extraterrestrial civilization commences.

Table of Contents
Introduction
The Topics
The Participants
Acknowledgements
Overview
Section I: An Extraordinary Event
Section II: Contact: Long-Ter ml triplications for Humanity
Section III: Who Said What: A Summary and Eleven Conclusions
Section IV: Participants' Statements
Topic 1: Practical Information
Super luminal Strings Theory: What ETI May Teach Us
Topic 2: Answers to Major Questions
Implications of Contact with ETI Far Older than Humankind
Extraterrestrials and Objective Knowledge
Topic 3: Changes in Our View of Ourselves
Social Comparison, Identity, and Self-Esteem
Transformations in Spirituality and Religion
Crisis at Mid-Millennium: A Report from the Year 2600
Topic 4: Cooperation in Joint Galactic Projects
The Role of Artists in Post-Contact Self-Identity
Topic 5: Long-Term Effects Primarily Negative
Human Analogues May Portend ET Conduct Toward Humanity
Null or Negative Effects of ETI Contact in the Next Millennium
Topic 6: What Next?
Pursuing Five Strategies for Achieving Contact
What Can We Do Now?
Spreading the Word
Speculations on the First Contact
Section V: Powerful Insights: In-Depth Papers by Participants and Others
1 The Role of the Social Sciences in SETI
2 The Cosmic Environment for the Growth of Complexity
3 Cosmic Humanity
4 How Old Is ET?
5 Networking with Our Galactic Neighbors
6 How to Achieve Contact: Five Promising Strategies
7 The Contact Hypothesis: On the Impossibility of Sustained and Mutually Beneficial Contact between Aliens, and Two Proofs to the Contrary
8 SETI, Consilience, and the Unity of Knowledge
9 Cultural Aspects of Astrobiology
10 Speculations on the First Contact: Encyclopedia Galactica or the Music of the Spheres?
11 Roman Catholic Views of Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Anticipating the Future by Examining the Past
Section VI: Participant Biographies
Ragbir Bhathal
John Billingham
Eric J. Chaisson
Bob Citron
Kathleen Connell
Paul Davies
Steven J. Dick
Ben Finney
Albert A. Harrison
David Hines
Guillermo A. Lemarchand
Claudio Maccone
Jill Tarter
Keiko Tokunaga
Allen Tough
Douglas A. Vakoch

Download File Size:5.85 MB

---