Instead, Shostak suggests that we just gabble. "My conclusion is that you would just send them the Google servers. That's an enormous amount of information, much of it redundant and pictographic. Much of it is pornographic too, but I expect they could handle that." (Although it raises questions like, can Earth handle a trillion orders for Viagra?)
I give you "Exolanguage: do you speak alien?" It reminds me of that scene in Independence Day when they send up the "welcome wagon" helicopter with all the flashy lights, as though blinding the aliens with high beams (but there's patterns!) isn't going to bug them or anything. The article does raise an interesting theory, that perhaps math is not math to aliens, and that we should not assume that any extraterrestrial civilization advanced enough to hear our broadcasts will understand that 1+1=2. My favorite line is, "Maybe everyone's listening but no one is transmitting. Maybe it takes an audacious young civilisation like ours to do that." Would make sense to send porn out into the universe, then, right? Like some cosmic-scale fart joke? [Aside: holy christ we should from now on send nothing but rickrolls!]
See also: "What's on Earth Tonight?"
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