The Year of Contact
The cover chosen by Albin Michel (below) is not great.
But if you send me an email at
sciences
jp-petit.com
I can send you the pages above as attachments,
which you can print and stick onto your book, if you already own it.
In this new book, I adopted a fictional tone to provoke reflection in the reader on the theme of contact. If extraterrestrial civilizations were to visit us, how would these visitors position themselves relative to us on the "evolutionary scale"? On Earth, the human species exhibits differences spanning tens of thousands of years. A resident of a technologically advanced country and a Papuan can understand each other. They have a great deal in common, even if their views of the universe differ somewhat. Yet between us and the Papuans, there is at least thirty thousand years of difference. When we first made contact with these people, in the early 1930s, they were still living... in the Stone Age.
But what if the gap were to widen even further? With a Neanderthal, perhaps, but what exchanges could we possibly have with an... australopithecine?
In one of the chapters of the book, Peter Small and his friend Christine de Montmirail visit an ethologist named "Christophe Lent." In fact, this fiction serves as a convenient pretext to discuss the remarkable research conducted at the University of Yerkes in Florida, where scientists have managed to establish contact with bonobos—highly intelligent apes native to Zaire. Those who have seen these reports know that researchers use computer tools (touchscreens) to communicate with these distant cousins. This same fiction leads us to imagine that extraterrestrials might present a similar evolutionary gap relative to us, prompting them to communicate with us through a computerized protocol interface, in other words, an artificial intelligence system. This possibility deserved exploration. Along the way, we touch upon the inevitable emergence of genuine artificial intelligence (unrelated to what we currently possess), which will arise when our machines become "capable of programming themselves," a concept that might represent the very definition of intelligence (but not of... consciousness!). No "prodigy computer" today rivals our modern computers. This attribute is no longer ours, irreversibly. Our machines may one day become truly... intelligent—capable of analyzing extremely complex situations, storing vast amounts of data beyond our imagination, and formulating decision suggestions based on criteria that would ultimately elude us. I believe that "HAL" from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the supercomputer in Kubrick's film, even though it does so in a dramatic and "pathological" way, foreshadows our future, as science fiction often does. A future that might be much closer than we think, if certain mathematical barriers—such as the "wall of complexity," which is very real—could be overcome.
In this book, I suggest that the emergence of AI might represent a kind of unavoidable milestone in our turbulent evolution. We need computers to pilot our production lines, manage our inventories, and perform an ever-growing number of tasks. Today, we could no longer conceive of our technical-industrial activity without the aid of these machines, born barely half a century ago. Will we one day have to entrust intelligent machines with managing our economy, our demographics, our genome, our political and social organization, our health, and our security—because we ourselves are no longer capable of doing so? And if things take this course, how might our planetary society evolve? Might it organize itself like a human ant colony serving an AI so powerful that, in effect, it has seized control? In the manner of Aldous Huxley, I used fiction to illustrate my ideas, developing them through the mirror of a "computerized protocol interface" suddenly confronting Peter Small. I found this way of presenting things less intimidating, more pleasant, more "fluid." Fiction, humor, and science can profitably be combined. Wasn't that exactly what I initiated with my comic strips from the series "The Adventures of Anselme Lanturlu," which have existed now for a quarter of a century?
It is practically certain that we are visited by extraterrestrial civilizations, perhaps even since time immemorial. "How might these beings function, and what do they want?" This is the question that arises today, powerfully raised by Spielberg in his ten-episode series "Taken," recently broadcast on television. I'm not saying I agree with the thesis he develops, but I can at least conclude one thing: after twenty-eight years devoted to studying these files, the more time passes, the less I understand the purpose or finality of a contact occurring precisely at a moment when Earth seems to be undergoing the pains of birth linked to its evolution toward an increasingly intense, invasive, and unpredictable symbiosis between humanity and technology. The UFO phenomenon exploded at a time when, at the end of the 1940s, humans began—perhaps for the first time in their long history, though many aspects remain obscure—to create weapons, nuclear and biological, capable of destroying them and their habitat simultaneously. This issue is addressed in the book by the Indian character "Shandrah." How does the UFO problem fit into this dramatic context, especially when the very existence of this phenomenon has, in many countries—including ours and, of course, the United States—triggered irrational behavior, a subtle but merciless suppression, the origin of which seems to be an uncontrollable fear and unfathomable stupidity?
Since contact has proven problematic for half a century, what conclusion can we draw? Does this mean we are constantly confronted with disinformation designed to control our level of belief or skepticism? Or could this "fog" reveal a genuine difficulty in communication, even a profound mutual misunderstanding? We don't know. We lack answers, but we must ask every possible question.
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