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227 opportunity to study the development of consciousness, intelligence, and culture. The discipline that Soviet authors called “exosociology” still draws its experimental data from the only civilization known to us—our own. If alien civilizations told us their stories, we would be able to compare. Perhaps there are deep laws of individual and social behavior that hold rue for all species, all times, and all cultures.** Can we measure the impact of alien knowledge? White suggested a ormula in which the key factors are the “parity difference” in years, the raction of total knowledge transmitted, the distance in light-years, and the ime; the impact would intensify as the amount of new information trans- mitted increased (he apparently assumed remote contact). Harrison observed that there may be variables: the extent and pertinence of their knowledge and their ability to share it with us, their willingness to help, and our receptivity to what they have to offer.” Others have proposed ways of categorizing the impact of a remote detec- ion and the receipt of alien information. Billingham saw this as divided into two phases: the months or years following the detection, and the long- erm, in which the knowledge gained is absorbed into human society. Har- rison and his colleagues put it differently: At Force 1, we will assimilate he discovery that we are not alone in the universe. At Force 2, we may gain information from the alien society that will affect our own science and technology, with far-reaching implications for our economy, our politi- cal institutions, and our international affairs. At Force 3, we would com- municate and interact with the other civilization, trading information and perhaps developing a long-term dialogue.” Several commentators have speculated that the knowledge of a galactic community is not allowed to perish but is passed on from civilization to civilization, from one region of the Galaxy to another, eon after eon, in a kind of serial altruism. We ourselves may decide that we have a respon- sibility to transmit for the benefit of less advanced civilizations.*' (One may ask if those less advanced would be able to receive our messages.) “What if the Romans had prepared and distributed broadly across their empire volumes containing all their knowledge and that of the Greeks and Egyptians and all previous civilizations?” asked science fiction author James Gunn. “Would the Dark Ages have lasted for a thousand years?” Sullivan proposed a more melancholy scenario: True wisdom may be a torch—one that we have not yet received, but that can be handed down to us from a civilization late in its life and passed on by our world as its time of extinction draws near. Gunn described such a transfer of knowledge from a dying civilization in his novel The Listeners: “The transmission from Capella would continue for days or weeks or months, but eventually the inheritance from another star would be handed over, the messages would cease, and the silence would surge softly backward. ... By that time the computer would be at least half Capellan.”“ A Shortcut to Wisdom