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210 As Dyson described this “orthodox view” of interstellar communication, the maximum contact between societies would be a slow and benign exchange of messages, an exchange carrying only information and wisdom around the Galaxy, not conflict and turmoil. This SETI orthodoxy has led us toward a minimum contact scenario in which the first intercept is not likely to be very informative. We expect the other civilization to be so far away as to preclude meaningful interactive communication.° The preferred analog is contact between human civilizations separated in time, particularly the transmission of Greek science to the Latin West. Some one-way communications over thousands of years still affect our lives today, notably the world’s major religions.’ Science historian Dick, assuming a remote contact scenario, argued that the history of science offers deeper insights than political history or anthro- pology, as the contact will be intellectual and not physical. This suggests that analogs should be drawn from the history of ideas. Dick offered three examples from our own history: the transmission of Greek science to the Latin West via the Arabs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the recep- tion of great cosmological ideas such as the Copernican theory of the sixteenth century and the “galactocentric revolution” of the early twentieth century, and the reaction to Darwinian theory. Harrison pointed out an implicit assumption underlying Dick’s argu- ment: The information that might be exchanged will be of interest primar- ily to scientists. If alien transmissions address ideology, politics, technology, popular culture, and other subjects, the sociology of science may not be a good model. Dick recognized that the societal impact will depend strongly on the details. A “dial tone” signal, only giving evidence of intelligence, will be quite different in impact from the decipherment of significant amounts of information. If the latter is achieved, the impact will, in turn, depend on the nature of the information. “No one is wise enough to predict in detail what the consequences of .. . decoding will be,” declared a NASA report, “because no one is wise enough to understand beforehand what the nature of the message will be.”* Brin described the classic scenario as one centered on beneficent elders. SETI researchers eventually sift a beacon or tutorial broadcast out of the vast sea of stars, a signal that is designed to be decipherable by younger species. We discover that most of the Galaxy is a desert with vast distances separating isolated islands of wisdom. Upon receiving a one-way commu- nication, we begin to become another of those islands. We need not worry about physical contact because that is impossible; nor do we need to worry about the impact of alien ideas, as the Old Ones are wise. Stupid or pro- vocative replies from human groups won’t matter because distance makes our replies irrelevant. We will have plenty of time to follow the instructions of our betters. The Consequences of Contact