Do you remember the thrill that you get when you tell a friend or a group of friends about a social networking website and all of a sudden, they’ve joined up and made you a “friend” online. Then, they tell someone else who befriends them and may well make you another contact in their network.
I read this report from BBC Tech this morning.
According to the report, Bebo users all teamed up to send a message to space. To planet Gliese 581C, to be exact.
It’s expected to take about 20 years to get there.
Now, if there’s intelligent life there with equipment that will understand our medium and our language, this could be interesting.
If there’s someone there sitting on their computer when the message arrives, we could hear back in another 20 years if we assume that they have the same technology. Doing some mental math, that makes me – well, forty years older than I am right now.
I’m envisioning what could happen…
- we send them a virus and this starts an inter galactic war;
- we confirm to them that there’s no intelligent life here;
- we get a reply “LOL”;
- we get blocked by the Glieseian Spam filter;
- we end up with the slowest game of World of Warcraft ever;
- we get blocked by a content filter;
- we seriously have to explain Twitter, Facebook, Meebo, Del.icio.us, Microsoft Vista, and MySpace to yet another group of parents;
- we offend because smileys aren’t understood by the Universal Translator;
or the worst…
- we get looked at in a funny manner because they don’t “get” the Mac / PC commercials!
I’m also curious. If they don’t respond immediately, does a nudge take 20 years to get there as well?
Imagine the thrill, though, if we do get a response…
