[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I do NOT subscribe to Von-Daniken-like theories claiming we poor lowly earthlings got most of our technology from super advanced aliens. On the other hand, I personally think it is arrogant to assume that we learned EVERYTHING completely on our own.
It is not arrogant! It is a fact: a well-documented, undeniable fact. If we are talking about integrated circuits, then we know that every step along the way was discovered by people. They are well-known people who documented their work carefully. Most of them are still alive. Not one of them admits to being inspired by or given access to alien technology.
The theory I am referring to is that microelectronics (integrated circuits) were derived from alien technology. I have seen this idea bandied about on these ridiculous television shows. Microelectronics and the laser are the most impressive development of the last half-century, and the only ones that are even a little bit mysterious and awesome. I trust no one thinks Microsoft or the Internet were inspired by aliens.
Actually, there have not been any other impressive developments worth mentioning. Nothing since 1950, as Chris Tinsley used to say. Civilization has been stuck in a rut, biding its time, eating the theoretical seed corn developed in the 1930s.
On the same subject, Mike Carrell wrote
"But it's not surprising that a UFO would contain microelectronics and fiber optics. They are markers of a certain level of civilization, like the stone, bronze, and iron ages."
Of course I have never seen the inside of a UFO, but my guess is that this statement is completely wrong. We are talking about vehicles capable of crossing interstellar space, right? As Clark says, anything that advanced would be indistinguishable from magic. These devices would have to be designed to be thousands of times more reliable than anything we can conceive of, and assuming Einstein was right about speed of light they would also have to last hundreds if not thousands of times longer.
In other words, Carrell seems to be assuming that there are no stages beyond microelectronics and fiber optics. We could recognize their tools because they would be similar to ours in many ways -- they would still be microelectronics. (Actually, I expect that even people will soon graduate to micro-photonics, not electronics.) I assume there must be thousands more stages, and that technology capable of crossing interstellar space would have to be approximately 100,000 times more advanced than microelectronics are compared to stone-age tools.
If we could open up the UFO machines and look at the components, we would understand less about them than the caveman would understand looking inside a computer. We would see only solid masses of unfamiliar and probably undifferentiated materials and configurations. (I assume everything would be solid-state with no moving parts, but who knows? The whole machine might be in a plasma state for all I can say, organized and held together by forces I cannot conceive of, with "triple redundancy forever circuits" holding every atom in place.)
If we broke apart these solid state devices they would tell us nothing. We would be like a late-18th-century scientists trying to understand an integrated circuit chip from the broken fragments of the ceramic jacket. Imagine someone who understands a great deal about electricity, such as Benjamin Franklin, is given the smashed fragments of a semiconductor chip. His best microscope would not be powerful enough to resolve the components, even if he happened to point it at the right fragment. Even if he had an inkling that an IC chip carries electricity, he would have no means of seeing the components, and no way to begin to understand their function. That would be the effect of a 220-year gap in human technology, between people who speak the same language and who understand many of the same principles. Now multiply that gap by a factor of 100,000. I expect you would be left with something that would be a complete and total mystery to the best tools our science can muster.
Also, the chances that we could translate an alien language from writing are zero to none. We can barely decipher dead human languages even when we can make a good guess about what they probably say, and when people still speak some of the languages descended from them, as they do in Central America, for example. It is difficult for me to imagine anyone operating or understanding a machine without reading the documentation. Of course the machine might well read minds, so it might operate if you wished it to. (Your wish would be its command -- literally.) A handful of human-made machines have begun to do this, and I expect that within a thousand years or so they all will. But that would mean *the alien machine* would understand *us*, not the other way around. Also I doubt that an off-the-shelf machine could read any mind in any creature. It would only decipher signals from the brain of the species that designed it.
- Jed
