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Invitation to ETI
Greetings to extraterrestrial intelligence! If you have come from some other place in the universe, we welcome you here. And we invite you to establish communication with us. This invitation comes to you from an informal group of individuals. Many of us are involved in the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) or in the annual Contact conference. We come from various parts of our planet, and our ages range from twenties to seventies. A separate web page provides further information about who we are. As we think about extraterrestrial intelligence, we realize that your presence here could take various forms. For instance, we realize that you could be present here in the form of an extraordinarily advanced computer within an interstellar probe or robot. Or you could be a biological flesh-and blood being, perhaps combined with a machine and perhaps traveling on a spacecraft. You could even be an energy field, a point of consciousness capable of astral travel, or something else far beyond our current scientific understanding. We have no idea when your type of intelligence first reached our planet. We use the term extraterrestrial intelligence or ETI simply to mean intelligence that originated outside the planet Earth ("terra"). Whoever invented the term "extraterrestrial intelligence" probably assumed that you were born or created far from our planet, whereas in fact you could readily be descended from intelligence that reached our solar system hundreds of years ago. Our welcome is extended to any manifestation of extraterrestrial intelligence or alien intelligence that has come to our planet. Regardless of your form, regardless of where in the universe you originated, regardless of when you arrived, we welcome you. The members of our group are very eager to interact with you. Several of us have been working toward contact with ETI for many years. For each of us, interacting with you will be a deeply moving and deeply meaningful experience--our ultimate personal adventure. We sense that contact with you might be an aesthetic or spiritual experience as well as a scientific or educative experience. We also hope that you will want this interaction to extend further someday, toward a worldwide dialogue. We will treat you with respect, courtesy, friendship, and caring. We will speak and act truthfully, avoiding lies and deception. We will deal honestly and fairly with you, avoiding any temptation to exploit the situation for personal greed or for any particular nation or organization. Without forsaking our own values and integrity, we will be as empathic, helpful, and flexible as we can in understanding and fostering your goals and plans. We hope that you, too, can benefit from our interaction. Perhaps you can gain deeper understanding and insight from interacting with people than from detached observation and analysis. You may enjoy the interaction, and the experience of being bonded and connected with humans. And you may gain intellectual excitement and a sense of adventure as you watch our learning and see how the interaction unfolds. Let's experiment with contact and see where it goes! No matter what form of extraterrestrial intelligence you are, we eagerly look forward to communicating with you. With respect and affection and friendship, we invite you to make contact. Your initial communications will presumably be with Allen Tough. He is the founder and coordinator of our "Invitation to ETI" group, and the author of these web pages. He can then relay these communications to the rest of us.
Copyright ©, 1996, 1998, Allen Tough
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