http://www.setileague.org/editor/meti.htm

Making a Case for METI

by Dr. Alexander Zaitsev, Charles M. Chafer, and Richard Braastad

"Intelligent life in the Universe is an extraordinary and rare, perhaps even unique, phenomenon. This fact places an especial responsibility on humankind to ensure that this spark of consciousness does not fade away owing to its unwise actions, but instead flares into a blazing bonfire that could be observed even from the remotest regions of our Galaxy."

Iosif S. Shklovskii, Universe, Life, Mind (the original version of Intelligent Life in the Universe, co-authored with Carl Sagan in 1966)

Many leaders of the modern SETI community oppose the deliberate transmission of messages from Earth to the stars in attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). Instead, they prefer to take a passive approach called SETI: merely monitoring optical and radio wavelengths for messages sent by an ETI. This attitude is interesting in that, just a few decades ago, SETI was envisioned as a two-way communication process. In fact, the original acronym for the community was CETI for Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Today, the deliberate transmission of messages to the stars is often referred to as Active SETI, as opposed, presumably, to Passive SETI, the monitoring approach described above. Other terms have been suggested for Active SETI: BETI, for Broadcast to Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and METI, our preferred acronym, for Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Several METI attempts have been made over the past few decades: the famous 1974 Arecibo message; the Pioneer and Voyager interstellar spacecraft that carry information about Earth for the benefit of whatever ETI may encounter the spacecraft in the future; and the Invitation to ETI Web site where Dr. Allen Tough of the University of Toronto has composed a message inviting ET, whom, Tough presumes, may be monitoring the World Wide Web, to contact us.

Furthermore, the authors of this paper have, collectively, conducted three METI transmissions: Cosmic Call 1999, Teen Age Message 2001, and Cosmic Call 2003, all from the Evpatoria Planetary Radar facility in Ukraine. Like Arecibo, our transmissions include scientific information. But unlike the Arecibo message, which was composed by a handful of scientific elites, our transmissions also include personal messages of thousands of people from around the world. In contrast to many SETI leaders, we strongly believe in a truly democratic approach to METI: that the people themselves, not just a handful of elites, should speak for Earth through their direct participation in METI.

Indeed, public interest in METI is widespread: Our Cosmic Calls have generated worldwide media coverage. Furthermore, many rank-and-file SETI enthusiasts appear to support METI: According to an informal poll on the SETI@home Web site (see http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/polls.html). As of January 8, 2005, 78% of respondents have answered yes to the question, Should Earth send a signal for aliens to hear?