The topic that me and my partner chose is transportation system. I assume that if the aliens(heptapods) can land on earth, they must have their own transportation system to get to earth. A possibility is that they have the power to transport themselves through space from their planet to earth, or it might be that they built their own “spaceship”. On planet earth, we have many ways to transport ourselves from one place to another. I would assume that they might not be able to operate the transportation system on earth because of the way their body is built. However, the aliens could sit in a car or in a plane. I think it would be a great experience for them to truly learn what life on earth is like or what humans are like.
I drew an earth in the middle which I’m sure the alien could recognize. Some common transportations system that I drew are plane, car, trains, bicycles, boats, and the most basic one is walking.
With how their physical structure is form and their ability to arrive on earth, I think their transportation system is way ahead of us. However, the pioneer plague is to show that humans have long started using our intelligent to invent more ways to transport ourselves faster and easier. Through the showcase of this drawing, it would give the aliens a glimpse of what human’s daily life is like and how we went from nothing but just our legs, to creating inventions that is ten times bigger and powerful than us. We have changed and evolved.
I also drew stick figures(humans) uniting. With our transportations system, sending people to places around the world has help connect people in ways we could have never imagine, in terms of culture, language, etc. The transportation system brought people together where we could all learn from each other.
In the story, it mentioned that the heptapods’s written language can be rotated and that it looks more like graphic designs. This description reminds me of Chinese characters. Chinese characters are like pictures and there’s no specific letters to spell the characters out. I think in some way Chinese characters can relate to transportation because I see that a lot of characters in Japan are very similar to Chinese characters. This made me think in some way time long time ago, there was a language exchange between the Chinese and Japanese. Japanese people went to China or Chinese people went to Japan and they started exchanging their languages and cultures. This reminds me of the whole plot of the story. The aliens came to earth and how the narrator had to learn their language. There was a language exchange between them and through the learning of the alien’s language, the narrator mindset on the world change. I believe the alien also got something from the humans too. Thus, this shows that transportation plays an important role in society and that it’s important for alien to know about it.