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224 Hopes optimistic visions, our absorption into a network of communication would draw us into a larger consciousness whose sensory tendrils reach through- out the Galaxy, whose collective memory contains riches of information beyond imagining. Contact optimists foresee that more advanced civilizations will be gener- ous in sharing their knowledge. Drake fully expected an alien civilization to bequeath us vast libraries of useful information to do with as we wish. Sagan anticipated that the consequences for our civilization would be stun- ning—insights on alien science and technology, art, music, politics, ethics, philosophy, and religion.”* MacGowan and Ordway stretched this farther: the only immediate effect on human society of communications with extrasolar communities would + aden nnd 4 ate. be the sudden acquisition of a vast amount of very advanced scientific knowledge (emphasis added). Because two-way communication in the normal human sense is impossible over interstellar distances, only massive exchanges will take place. Great blocks of information would be prepared by scientists on the basis of sound logical planning and assumptions con- cerning the interests of the listener. These authors held out a euphoric hope: All of the important questions in science, engineering, and social science could be answered for us.”° Morrison suggested that extraterrestrials might send us a volume of knowledge greater than that transmitted to medieval Europe from the ancient Greeks, stimulating a new and greater Renaissance. All we know about ancient Greece is less than 10 billion bits of information, Morrison estimated, a quantity he suggested be named the Hellas. Information-rich alien messages might add up to much more than this gift of the Greeks. Our problem is to send to other cultures—and to receive from those cul- tures—something on the order of 100 Hellades of information.” Here, it is worth recalling that the Renaissance was due not just to the rediscovery of ancient knowledge but also to renewed faith in human capability. Would we have that faith after intense contact with a superior civilization? Mind-Stretcher. Sagan suggested that civilizations might be classified by their information content.** Where would we rank in that classification? If a more advanced civilization offered us new knowledge, could we offer ast Sagan developed the concept of an Encyclopedia Galactica, a vast trea- sury of information amassed by other intelligences that might be available to newly arrived technological civilizations like ours. We might find our- selves plugged into a kind of galactic telephone network—a brilliant intel- lectual commerce with a magical and dazzling diversity of civilizations. McConnell, writing a generation later, envisioned what he called an inter- stellar Internet.” anything meaningful in return?