Quote:
Originally Posted by Fortis
While reading this thread I am reminded of the short story by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic, which posits the notion that we would have about as much of an understanding about the significance of stuff left behind by visiting aliens, as animals would understand what was going on with the junk left behind by people who stop by the side of the road, in a wood, for a picnic.
The odds of us being able to reverse engineer it into something even vaguely useful seems slim at best. |
Take someone from 1809 and show them your house. How many "gadgets" could they reproduce? The plastic shelves? The teflon pans? The LED tv? The electric coffee pot? The poor guy would freeze to death because he would be able to find a fireplace! I suspect that any aliens that do make here will be a bit beyond that 200 year gap.