As one of the youngest fields, SETI is now old

Only in truly engaging astrobiological, AI, transhumanist, global risk, and philosophical communities in fruitful interdisciplinary worldview can SETI truly achieve the respect and dignity that pioneers like Carl Sagan justifiably aspired to.

Amen! Preaching to the choir here. During my long experience with SETI (as of writing this, it has been almost eight whole weeks), I have slowly shifted my thoughts towards those beautifully reflected in this paper. Bradbury and co. point out that SETI used to be considered imaginative and maybe even daring, the field but has not continued to develop with the times. Many searches continue to be what the authors call “orthodox SETI” which is looking for signals at a particular frequency (usually radio), and this is what many think of when they think of SETI (aside from crackpots looking for little green men). The authors suggest expanding SETI to include artifact searches, or traces of a civilization that could remain past the civilizations lifetime. These searches also remove the assumption that the ET civilization is trying to contact us or otherwise alert us of their existence, an assumption that, while required to be able to search for beacons, might not be true.

This paper slightly amuses me in that it’s sort of a shaming of the field. The authors realized that the field had become stagnant, and this was apparently a good way to get it moving again? I’m not sure if this paper brought about any change, but as an idealist, I’d like to believe that it did. Since this paper, there seems to have been an emergence of artefact SETI (that the authors refer to as Dysonian SETI), but this might be a trend that I have only noticed through the diverse papers selected for this class. I will say that I have not noticed much on an increase in the interdisciplinary interactions of SETI, but I feel a lot of that is academics too embarrassed to join the field (or they think it BS). This is something that I really wish would change, as I’m sure many in the field wish also. Bringing SETI up-to-date with current technologies (oh, the irony), knowledge, and collaboration could really improve where the field is going, as well as improve its funding.