So Life of Mammals. In terms of production values this is a whole different story. It seems like modern TV, unlike the predecessors. It starts with David waxing about how clever Mammals are and end with a plea for population control. Before that he notes that we seem at the moment destined to reach further to the stars as we outgrow our planet. And so it occurs to me what a fantastic survey of life on Earth the Life Box actually is. If you wanted to prepare aliens in other galaxies for our arrival - just give them the box, some popcorn and a very large drink and tell them not to make an plans for the next couple of weeks. Better still, stick rockets on the bottom of the box and launch some into space.
This made me think about that other attempt to make first contact with aliens: The Golden Record. This is the gold LP which they attached to two of the voyager space probes when the sent them on their merry way through our solar system. They are now both out of our solar system and in others, waiting to be picked up by intelligent aliens, and provided they have a record player, played by them so that first contact (for us at least) can be achieved.
The Golden Record is a very strange thing indeed. If I had one I couldn’t play it. Even though I have an LP player this one is gold and has to revolve at a different speed. Apparently they included instructions on how to build a player! Why didn’t they just send a player? The aliens are probably staring at the record and instructions in much the same way as some mammals stare at flat pack furniture.
Luckily someone had the good sense to copy everything on the disk to CD before they sent it. On the CD at least is a large number of photographs/images and lots of music and some messages from the people of earth. The opening address is from one Mr Kurt Waldhiem. The head of the UN at the time and now infamous for his refusal to admit knowledge of the holocaust during his time as a Nazi functionary in Austria. There seems to be a strange tension about whether or not this is a UN thing or an American thing. There are messages from the UN and the people of the Earth but there is also a separate message from the people of the US who cant help pointing out that they “built this craft”.
After browsing the images and listening to the music you cant help feeling that the impression the aliens will form is “what a confusing and depressing bunch but don’t they make a lot of music”. The survey of music is really a very refreshing mix of classical European music, folk music from various countries and very limited “popular” music. Only Chuck Berry's Johnny be Good made it on to the disk. The only concession to the Rock n Roll era. Apparently the Beetles Here Comes the Sun was considered but ultimately rejected. But the text and images are depressing and confusing. There is clearly a cold war feel about it, with more than one suggestion that mankind will probably blow itself and the planet up before anyone so much as lays tentacles on the disk. And the images, well where do I start? There is no narrative in them, yet they seem to be numbered. An image of man's internal organs precedes one of his actual likeness – so aliens are probably going to expect us to look like something that fell off the operating table.
There are lots of mathemaical type drawings. One, the only one I could easily understand was about our number system, another seemed to be explaining our solar system in terms of he distance to various planets. Others I don't have a clue. I'm an averagely intelligent human (I must stop calling myself a mammal) and I honestly can't understand most of the drawings, we seem to have been a little optimistic about what the aliens are going to be able to glean from the drawings. They also look very unappealing a bit like the drawings you would get on those Open University TV shows you would sometimes wake up to when you had fallen asleep in front of the TV.
The photographs seem to be the kind you find on our computer when you haven't added any and your computer decides to scan the drive for media files. I think you know the ones. Theres the sprinter getting ready to start the race, the flower, the not very funny "amusing cartoon" head. Well the photos on the Golden Record are not so different from these. There is one of sprinters - so politically correct that it seems to have captured contestants from our different races, but oddly shows the white skinned guy winning. Hope the aliens don't expect that to happen often.
Then there is my favorite pair. First we seen an old artisan carving a wooden elephant. Then the next shot we see a real elephant pushing logs of wood. I am able to understand this is probably a random juxtaposition but the alien? I'm pretty sure it will at least cross his mind that some of us can turn tiny pieces of wood into immense creatures.
The rest of the pictures are as inexplicable as they are boring and its all rounded off with the depressing farewell from Jimmy Carter that we going to be lucky to "survive our time". Perhaps David is right we should probably stay here. If its true what they say about first impressions I think we've blown it. At least if we used the Life Box as our calling card we could have played on the cuteness of some of the other lifeforms here. Some of them are musical too.
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