Chapter 12 12. Education for Starcraft

(Excerpt from "Concordance of Important Terms for Starcraft". First edition in 2071.) It is now well known to us that the interstellar space probe, commonly called the interstellar spacecraft, acts completely independently and works according to the programs stored in it 60,000 years ago.When it travels between celestial bodies similar to the sun, it uses the 500-kilometer-long antenna to send the collected information back to its own base, and at the same time continuously obtains various latest data from there. However, when passing through a planetary system, interstellar vehicles can use "solar energy" to increase the speed of information transmission many times.In addition, it will also "continuously charge the battery", of course, the analogy made here is only a very bold assumption.Because it is the same as the space probes such as the "Pioneer" and "Voyager" launched by us at the beginning, it uses the gravitational field of various celestial bodies to ensure that it flies from one planet to another.Therefore, unless some kind of mechanical damage occurs and the flight is finally forced to stop, otherwise, its working life is effectively infinite.Alpha Constellation is its slated eleventh intermediate stop.After it passed our solar system like a comet, it was heading for a planet twelve light-years away in the constellation R-Cetus.If there is activity of intelligent life there, it will be able to have a new dialogue shortly after 8100 AD...

...Since the interplanetary vehicle has two missions at the same time - as a messenger and as a researcher, when it discovers a craft civilization during its present journey of thousands of years, it will establish friendly relations with this civilization And began to exchange messages - the only possible means of interstellar communication.Then, before the interstellar craft re-boards on its endless journey, it leaves the coordinates of its birthplace.At that time, the world from which the starcraft was launched was already waiting for a direct call from a new user of the galactic "telephone line network".

As humans living on Earth, we take pride in identifying the celestial body from which the interstellar craft was born, and sending signals there even before it explained its celestial map to us.Now, we only need another one hundred and four years to wait for the reply.What a stroke of luck we had—we had found neighbors so close. After the first few communications, it was clear that the number of basic Earth words that the interplanetary vehicle could make was in the thousands.After a thorough analysis of the images and signals transmitted by television and radio, their meaning has been worked out.The various materials it collected in the process of gradually approaching our planet show that it completely failed to grasp the characteristics of the genealogy of human civilization when it collected materials.Among these sources there is hardly any up-to-date data in the natural sciences, and even less in modern mathematics—all it collects is the worthless dross of literature, music, and the plastic arts.

Like all gifted autodidacts, Starcraft has a huge educational gap.Therefore, according to the so-called principle of "it is better to give too much than too little", as soon as the mutual contact is arranged, several encyclopedias, including the "Encyclopedia of the World", are "gifted" to the interstellar spacecraft.It took about an hour to disseminate these materials.After this, the interplanetary fell silent for four hours—the longest pause it had ever experienced between communications.When it reconnected, its vocabulary has become extremely rich, and it can easily pass the "Turing test" in 99% of the cases.Based on the content of the information received from the interplanetary vehicle, it is simply inconceivable that it was a machine other than a highly educated and insightful person.

However, certain shortcomings also emerged.For example, the improper use of some nouns with double meanings, and the lack of lively mood in the dialogue.But that's to be expected.Unlike some of the most perfect electronic computers on Earth, which can reproduce the emotions of their creators if necessary, starcraft reflect the feelings and desires of representatives of biological forms that are quite different from our own, and therefore, most of them are People can't understand. On the contrary, the interstellar spacecraft can understand clearly and unmistakably that "the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two right angles".But when writing out:

she opened Leading to the top of the tower of Natu City the forgotten world The secret window of... It does not necessarily realize that this refers to Keats (the English poet) when he writes such sentences. For it, the more incomprehensible is probably Shakespeare's verse: how can i put your face Compared with the summer day? No, you are sweeter, gentler, And more beautiful... Desiring to fill the educational gap left by the interstellar craft, it was crammed with musical material for many hours, endlessly shown operas and scenes from human and animal life.In this case, it is not acceptable to not check the data.While the human propensity to violence and war was known to the starship (sadly, it was too late to ask it to return the Encyclopedia), only carefully selected data were broadcast to it.During the period before the interstellar spacecraft was far enough away to receive and record the signal, the usual radio and television broadcasts were all but stopped.

Philosophers will debate endlessly for many centuries to come as to how far interplanetary vehicles have come to understand human endeavors and preoccupations.But there is only one point where there is no disagreement: the one hundred days since the interstellar spacecraft appeared in the solar system, it has changed human beings' concept of the universe, the origin of the universe, and the status of human beings in the universe. When the interstellar spacecraft is gone, civilization on Earth will never be the same again.