5.2 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology,_Anthropology,_and_Interstellar_Communication | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:15:35.284004+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Publication history == Vakoch is a professor emeritus of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and a self-described exo-semiotician whose research interests include psychology, comparative religion, and the philosophy of science. He is the Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute. In a 2002 interview with Dennis Overbye for The New York Times, he discussed his criticism of the natural sciences focus of SETI research and his work to view the subject through a humanities-focused lens, including the comparison of interstellar communication to cross-cultural interactions between terrestrial societies. One of Vakoch's goals in compiling and editing Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication was to highlight less optimistic perspectives on interstellar communications from such fields, addressing concerns about significant inferential gaps that had been neglected by the physical sciences. NASA intended to publish Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication in both print and e-book form on 10 June 2014. On 21 May, a PDF file of the book was accidentally published on NASA's website and picked up by Gizmodo. The PDF was taken down rapidly after Gizmodo published a review, with the intention of re-releasing it on the originally intended date, but demand for copies was so high that the publication was accelerated; MOBI, EPUB, and PDF versions were officially released on 22 May and made freely available online. A paperback edition was published in September 2014 and a hardcover edition was published that December. The collection was published by NASA's History Program Office, part of the Public Outreach Division of its Office of Communications, under the NASA History Series imprint.
== Cultural impact and reception ==
Gizmodo described Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication as "truly fascinating stuff" that managed to be both complex and accessible. The review began with an out-of-context quote from William Edmondson's essay on how mysterious stone carvings "might have been made by aliens" as a metaphor for the difficulties in researching long-lost ancient societies. Though it went on to note that this should not be interpreted as a literal statement, the quote was picked up by publications such as Artnet, The Blaze, and The Huffington Post as a clickbait headline. Some of these articles noted that the statement was not representative of the essay's content; others took it at face value. The aerospace analyst Jeff Foust decried the phenomenon in his review, but noted its role in highlighting how difficult even communication between human beings of similar cultures can be. Upon the book's official release, it received mostly positive reviews. Emily Gertz, writing for Popular Science, found it "refreshing" and compared the issues it raised to those explored by science fiction works such as The Sparrow, a novel about a Jesuit priest making contact with an alien civilization. Michael Franco of CNET lauded its comprehensiveness, and Jolene Creighton, co-founder of the science news site From Quarks to Quasars, called it "a fantastic text to save for a rainy day". Writing for The Daily Dot, Aja Romano commented that the book came from a thoroughly optimistic point of view about both the existence and benevolence of extraterrestrial intelligence, but that it provided thorough investigation into SETI and had a strong understanding of the subject it investigated. Mark Anderson, Chair of the Notable Documents Panel of the American Library Association's Government Documents Round Table and research librarian at the University of Northern Colorado, reviewed Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication for Library Journal alongside other books published by United States government offices. He highlighted the depth of the book's scholarship and its nonetheless accessible writing. In June 2014, weeks after the book's official release, Joshua Rothman interviewed Vakoch for The New Yorker about the struggles of extraterrestrial communication. Vakoch explained the book's purpose, discussing the integral role archaeologists and anthropologists play in extraterrestrial research. He referred to the conclusions reached by the essayists, such as Lestel's discussion of the implications involved in being unable to understand or decode potential alien messages. Vakoch described the humanities perspective on extraterrestrial communication as increasingly "skeptical and critical", but "a criticism that engages, as opposed to a criticism that dismisses". He noted that although bridging the communication gap with an extraterrestrial civilization would be a difficult ask, the rapid discovery of exoplanets in the past decades increased the likelihood extraterrestrial intelligence would be identified, making the issue more relevant.
== References ==
== External links ==
PDF available for free download through NASA