Brothers from Another Planet

Someone was bound to come up with this idea.

A group at Cosmos Magazine, in honor of National Science Week in Australia and the International Year of Astronomy, has launched a site in which you can send an SMS message to Gliese 581d, a planet, possibly Earth-like, 20.3 light years away in the constellation Libra.

People are posting from all over the world and while I'm not sure if these entries are moderated in some way, a sampling of messages includes:

"we're a mob called human beings. we make lots of mistakes but we basically mean well most of the time, although i wouldn't trust us as far as you could throw us". ' Deb from Australia

"Do you have beautiful and sexy women that are always willing to share their love and DO NOT MAKE stupid comments? Bring some to the Dominican Republic PLEEEEASE" Jose from Santo Domingo City

"We are but primitive specks floating amongst the stars. Take solace in the fact that you are not alone should this message reach you. Love, Earth." Patrick from Flushing

Obviously, many of these are humorous but in a very unscientific perusal of some of the entries, it's interesting to see the themes that emerge if people had a chance to communicate with people on another planet and how these messages reflect how we see ourselves. A lot of people talk about what a hostile species we humans are, how we're destroying our own planet and the need for peace.

If extra terrestrials ever receive these messages, would they bother to respond?

Augmented Reality

First it was Facebook applications, then it was i-phone apps and now the latest fad to catch on is augmented reality. Essentially, it's a way for people to literally interact with brands and break the "fourth wall" of the computer screen; a combination of the real world with a virtual one. We've been playing around with this at Firstborn and a few possible projects have come in the door. In one form, you print out a sheet of paper with pre-determined coordinates that are tracked by a web cam. What you see on your computer is a virtual object or character that reacts to your hand movements, for example. There's an example of this in a recent GE site that was created by Goodby Silverstein and North Kingdom.