Pioneer Plaque
Rin & Freddie
We would like to introduce a piece of technology from Earth called “television”. A television (TV) is a device that uses electromagnetic waves over long distances. More specifically, it works by converting images and sounds into electrical signals that are transmitted through the air or through cables, and then received by a television set or other device that converts the signals back into images and sounds. It is also a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. Typically, humans use this device to watch moving pictures and listen to sounds that are broadcast from a central source.
But why do we want to introduce television to aliens? There are three main reasons. To start with, if aliens want to learn about human civilization, television is definitely something they don’t want to miss considering its significance of being a milestone in the development of technology. In the past decades, it has served as a major form of entertainment, information and communication that has shaped the way humans interact with each other and the world around them. What’s more, it is shown in the story that aliens and humans can communicate in a pictographic manner. Similarly, television is a media which converts information and enables communication through visuals. Therefore, if aliens would like to further learn about our history, culture, language and society, television is a perfect way for them to get all this information. Finally, we know that aliens can experience time as a whole, perceiving past, present and future simultaneously. They can also bounce back and forth through different time periods. Although television can provide us with real-time live broadcasts and we have access to news and programs from the past, we can’t predict what will happen in the future. So if aliens get to know how television works, is there any chance that they can help us achieve another technological breakthrough?
As shown in our pioneer plague, the television is composed of several parts including the power source which carries electricity into the television and makes all other parts work, the cable that receives the signals of information to be transmitted, a decoder that transmits the information into images and sounds, and two outputs which are a viewer screen and a loudspeaker. We human beings can use our eyes and ears to receive information respectively from the viewer screen and the loudspeaker and form combined information in our brain in order to entertain. In order to explain all of these to the aliens, we can first show how electricity and electromagnetic waves work in our world. Based on that, we can then show graphic instructions of how the information is transmitted and how human beings eventually get information from it. During the communication and translation process, we start with the electricity and electromagnetic waves to give them a basic physical knowledge structure so that they can interpret this structure into their own language for us to learn. Then we dig deeper into a more specific structure and repeat this process again and again.
