Pioneer Plaque

This Pioneer Plaque symbolizes the global connectivity facilitated by social media, which we used the Wechat icon to represent. At the center, we depict the iconic WeChat logo, a digital bridge that spans geographical borders. Radiating outward are lines connecting diverse cultural symbols, transport, and people, representing the power of social media to unite humanity.

We chose Wechat because it’s a typical media with over a billion users worldwide, serves as a digital bridge connecting people of different nations, languages, and cultures. Through text, voice, and video, WeChat fosters communication, understanding, and collaboration across the globe. It exemplifies how technology can break down barriers and bring the world closer together, transcending physical boundaries and promoting a global community.

We create an image showing Earth as a globe with lines connecting various points on the planet. These lines represent the communication pathways enabled by social media. 

Through this image, you can convey to the aliens that WeChat is a global communication tool that allows people from all over the world to connect and interact seamlessly. The lines represent the exchange of messages, information, and ideas across different cultures and languages. WeChat, like a universal language, unites people on Earth and fosters understanding and cooperation, transcending the boundaries of time and space.

And, since aliens in “The Story of Your Life” don’t understand our how our world works, explaining it requires a unique approach. So we might use more abstract concepts and visual metaphors. So instead of using familiar symbols, we created an abstract representation of interconnected minds forming a web of light, radiating from the Earth’s surface. WeChat’s role is to weave this web, allowing different minds to communicate and share their thoughts instantaneously. To help the aliens grasp the idea, we draw an analogy to their telepathic abilities (if they possess such abilities in the story). Explain that, for humans, WeChat is a way to communicate and share thoughts and experiences across distances, much like the aliens’ telepathy, but mediated through technology.