{"id":501,"date":"2002-09-22T02:40:00","date_gmt":"2002-09-22T02:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jmatt.net\/?p=501"},"modified":"2013-11-28T02:44:07","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T02:44:07","slug":"idea-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/?p=501","title":{"rendered":"Idea Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week’s Earth Harp performance (see below) was sponsored by the Idea Festival <\/a>, an interesting symposium of technology and art, or, according to its own description<\/a>, “a unique international event centering around the presentation, integration and exploration of “big ideas” and innovation, spanning a range of fields.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Before Friday’s performance, one of the organizers mentioned some of the other scheduled activities, including the “launch” of a deep time probe<\/a> into space from the courthouse lawn. I thought “Yeah, right!”. This morning’s newspaper<\/a> explained that it’s a laser beam digitally encoded with the kind of information that might normally be included in a time capsule.<\/p>\n

\nThat’s a pretty cool idea. I really believe there is intelligence elsewhere in the universe. I’m not a National Enquirer alien abduction fan, but as vast as the universe is, it would seem arrogant to believe that our little teeny speck contains the only intelligent life. I realize the chances of a pulse of light hitting the right speck of space at the right time to be caught by a civilization that can decode it are infinitesimally small. Would we be ready to interpret such a “probe” if one hit us? Have we already missed one? But it’s a pretty low-cost approach to trying to communicate with others, realizing that at best, the communication will be one-way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week’s Earth Harp performance (see below) was sponsored by the Idea Festival , an interesting symposium of technology and art, or, according to its own description, “a unique international event centering around the presentation, integration and exploration of “big ideas” and innovation, spanning a range of fields.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-85","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}