No one here is denegrating or even downplaying the efforts of those who started
the SETI effort, least of all me. But those who have the "stones" (read budget
and equipment) to conduct the kind of SETI programs that could actually bring
about tangible results are still approaching the subject as the state of SETI was
in its pioneer days.

The efforts of the SETI pioneers and those who carry on their work are certainly
recognized and lauded, but it would be wrong from the scientific stance to keep
supporting them and the state of things as they are if they do not progress with
the rest of the scientific fields. SETI will only lose the tentative hold it has long
fought to gain in the mainstream sciences if it does not adjust its parameters to
the new and revolutionary discoveries being made in astronomy and technology
literally every day.

I also understand that groups like The SETI Institute need to be conservative
beyond the need for scientific objectivism. This is in order to avoid being labeled
with the UFO fringe even more than it already is by the general public and even
some professional scientists, who tend to lump anything about aliens in together
and thinks that SETI is one monolithic government-run agency. That stopped
for good in 1993 after just one year and was barely supported even before then.

The frustration being expressed in the main article (and not unsupported whining
as you so wrongly label it) is not just about some new-fangled approach or two to
SETI that hasn't even gotten its feet wet yet.

It is about the fact that a number of major new SETI approaches - such as searching
for Dyson Shells or comparable mega astroengineering projects, or for alien probes
right in our Sol system - have been promoted for decades in certain cases by
professional scientists and are only now even beginning to be recognized by
"mainstream" SETI.

Citing the two cases I present above, both are quite plausible based on what we
know about such technology and physics. Especially in the case of advanced ETI
structures, evidence has been swinging in the favor of us having a much better
chance of detecting such things over the chances of an alien race beaming a
signal meant for humanity.

With the exception of but a few in the past, most folks have thought of potential
SETI societies as being somewhat like us with a desire to contact others in the
galaxy. But as we have seen with our own developments and realizations in
nanotechnology and AI, that stage may indeed be a very short one - assuming
alien societies would develop like human civilization at all. If we have any real
chance of finding ETI, it may only be from the technological scraps they leave
in the galaxy such as infrared radiation from Dyson Shells and similar structures
such advanced cultures would create to utilize all the energy output of a star.

We can do little more than hope such beings would actually want to say Hi to
us, but more than likely they would have little reason to converse with us (to
use the old but still relevant analogy of us talking to ants), thus the need to
find their signatures if we want to learn that anyone else is with us in the Universe.

But the amount of actual SETI time for such concepts has been quite minimal right
up to the present. I can think of only a few searches for Dyson Shells over the
whole history of modern SETI and virtually nothing in a serious scientific way regarding
alien probes in our Sol system. Certainly a discovery with the latter case would bring
about almost immediate scientific and visceral benefits, as opposed to say a signal from
a star system hundreds or thousands of light years from Earth (don't worry, I am not
putting down Distant SETI, just pointing out which would "grab" humanity more).

In case you are wondering, there have been serious proposals for searching for
alien probes using real, existing technology. See here:

http://www.interstellar-probes.org/SETI/OSETI-3JPL1.pdf

Look at the following example which I have brought up before: Optical SETI was
first promoted very shortly after the first modern radio searches began in 1960.
Interstellar laser and infrared signals were certainly detectable by humanity even
in those days.

But various SETI pioneers concluded that since we didn't have the technology
to beam powerful lasers to other star systems, that negated the chances of a
more advanced society doing the same. Everything that wasn't Radio SETI
languished on the backroom shelves of Mainstream SETI until the late 1990s,
when our advances in such technologies suddenly "made" it possible for ETI to
do it, too.

I am not talking wild concepts here: Such things as lasers are hardly the stuff
of science fiction. But Mainstream SETI has mainly stuck to its old foundations
and that is what is being objected to, not just because others have their own
legit concepts for finding alien intelligences, but also due to the possible threat
of SETI being left by the wayside and marginalized after such a long, hard
battle - made all the more head-shaking due to the fact that finding life
beyond Earth should be considered one of the most important and laudable
goals of humanity.