2011-04-27

Socionomics Alert! SETI Closes!


SETI Institute to shut down alien-seeking radio dishes
Lacking the money to pay its operating expenses, Mountain View's SETI Institute has pulled the plug on the renowned Allen Telescope Array, a field of radio dishes that scan the skies for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.

In an April 22 letter to donors, SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson said that last week the array was put into "hibernation," safe but nonfunctioning, because of inadequate government support.
Blogger Vox Day wrote an article more than two years ago about the popularity of fantasy versus science fiction, based on socionomics.
It is a fairly well-accepted idea that science fiction is an expansionary phenomenon. Its Golden Age is not only simultaneous with the great American economic expansion of the 1950s, but its general theme of onward and upward combined with its ardent technophilia and utopian politics is entirely in keeping with a bullish mindset. Indeed, the very construction of the vast space fleets and galaxy-spanning civilizations inherently assumes massive economic growth exceeding anything that has ever been seen before in the entire history of Man. Most modern fantasy is of a similar bent, in that it tends toward the utopian, the progressive, and the economically expansive. The world of Harry Potter, for example, is a peaceful and wealthy one in which children are viewed as economic burdens and the source of sub-normal consumption capacities rather than as the productive resource that they have historically been considered in less fortunate times.

It is interesting to consider, then, that Burroughs published both his Tarzan and his Barsoom novels during the pre-war recession of 1912-1914. Howard published the first 18 Conan stories in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and John Norman’s Gor novels hit the height of their popularity during the extended economic morass of the 1970s. Both Tolkein and Lewis, of course, published their classic works in the 1950s, but they did so in a post-war England that was not enjoying the manufacturing boom that was taking place in America at the same time.
With Game of Thrones airing on HBO, a show based on a fantasy novel, there's confirming evidence in the entertainment sector. However, the closing of SETI is a stronger confirmation of this argument and I see at least three effects of social mood interacting here.

First, the search for extraterrestrial life is a perfect example of positive social mood expressed through openness to foreigners/others.

Second, this very unsuccessful effort is tied to peoples' beliefs about the world, i.e. people must believe there are extraterrestrials to find and they must think about them, despite no evidence, and they must also believe that these beings will be friendly, rather than hostile. Recent movies such as Monsters, Battle: Los Angeles and Skyline are just a few that have come out in the past 6-8 months, and all portrayed aliens as hostile or threatening. I don't know the plot of Super 8, but the trailers suggest a less than benign alien being.

Third, there's the economic component. Resources are scare and cuts must be made. Any budget cuts could fit this story line, but for socionomic reasons, it makes sense that an effort such as this would be cut. It is almost science fiction itself, given that it is, at this point, no different than ghost hunters or a scientific search for proof of God's existence, save for the millions in funding and high tech equipment. It is an act of faith carried out by a part of the scientific community, and it has met negative social mood head on.

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