DEPT. OF SPECULATION (JENNY OFFILL) AND GOLDEN RECORD

The Golden Record included greetings in fifty-four human and one whale language, ninety minutes of music from around the world, and 117 pictures of life on Earth. These pictures were meant to suggest the widest possible range of human experiences. Only two things were off-limits. NASA decreed that no pictures could depict sex and no pictures could depict violence. No sex because NASA was prudish and no violence because images of ruins or bombs exploding might be interpreted by aliens as threatening.

The Golden Record was launched in 1977 inside the space probe Voyager. It´s like a message in a bottle in the sea, but there are very litle chances of someone receiving it. And it´s even more unlikely that the hypothetical recipient could decode the message.

The film The Arrival answers accurately the question of how to find a shared language with an ET civilization

THE HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF (JEAN GIONO) AND THE LIMITS OF AUTOPSY

Here you have a man (or woman) opened up from head to foot like an ox at a butcher shop and there, leaning over him (or her) with all his implements, the artist. He may know quite well what the man (or woman) died of. But “why,” in its deeper sense, is another matter. Another matter, which, to be brought into the open, would require knowledge of the “how”: how this man (or this woman) had lived. This man (or woman) has loved; hated; lied; suffered; and enjoyed the love, hatred, and lies of others. But no trace of all this at the autopsy

You can´t reach for the moon. Human soul is impenetrable and plausible. It would be very unfair that the autopsy gave away about our privacy. And the other way round, your closest friend doesn´t know about your pancreas.

It´s curious how this middle-20th-century novel is pioneer in the use of inclusive language