NASA launched a couple of spacecrafts called the Voyager 1 and 2 in the 70s and sent each of them on a path towards the outer reaches of space. They’ve taken some neat pictures and stuff since then, but that isn’t their only purpose. The crafts both hold a golden phonograph record containing sights and sounds of Earth, intended as a time capsule for - or a first step in communicating with - any alien species the Voyagers happen to come across.
It’d be pretty crazy if the spacecrafts bump into an alien civilization, but it might all be for nothing regardless, because, like, what the fuck are the aliens going to do with a phonograph record? They’ll think it’s a frisbee. You have to somehow tell them that the phonograph record is something that contains information, and then you’ve got to get them to create a phonograph, play the record and the right speed, and also you have to indicate to them what the output is supposed to look like. What if the aliens don’t have sight and hearing like us? What if they don’t have hands? This is probably the hardest game of charades ever played.
Well, with these issues in mind, a group of scientists working on the mission came up with some insane, convoluted-ass drawings for the cover of the record, intended as instructions for the aliens. (They look cool, and I’ve got some of them tattooed on my arm.) The drawings attempt to use binary, properties of the hydrogen atom, and graphs of waveforms to communicate the necessary information, hoping that the underlying properties of the universe that we share is enough of a language in itself to reach across space and time and connect with creatures beyond our imagination. It’s probably the best those very smart scientists could come up with, but, let’s be real, no alien is going to know what the fuck those drawings mean. Shit, I don’t even know what the fuck they mean.
You’d be forgiven if, looking at these impenetrable symbols, you came to the conclusion that the scientists were trying to hide something, that they were encrypting a secret they didn’t want people to know. But it’s the exact opposite, right? The drawings are actually an earnest attempt to communicate a message in a universal way. Kind of a tragic situation, isn’t it?
A sincere message misconstrued as a secret. Encoding confused for encryption. It’s like if you gave someone a number in binary. They’d be pretty annoyed with you, because they’d have to convert it to base 10. They’d think you’re being difficult. But if you’re trying to communicate across some kind of divide - man to machine, number system to number system, human to alien - binary, as nerdy as it is, is probably your best bet to be understood. Or it’s like if you had a political or moral message. You know, something to say. Well, you might weave that message into a story using metaphors, allusions, allegories, etc. And the story-encoded version is (usually) better. It might annoy English students who have to write an essay about it, but we want the story version. Talking tangentially about something, speaking about something without literally saying it, can sometimes flesh out an idea better than plain text can. It’s better that the Wizard of Oz is not a just 5 minute political ad about the gold standard. It’s better that Melville doesn’t just say in a few sentences what the whale means.
Maybe I’m not making any sense.
Someone asked me recently if I “enjoyed being mysterious,” which was disheartening, because I do - sometimes desperately - want to explain myself, but rarely have the language. It often seems to me like I’m in a completely different reality than others, a reality different from the one where everyone has hobbies and goals and desires and values and abundant love for family and friends. And I don’t know how to describe the way I see things using the language that people employ to describe themselves to one another. I’m not saying that no one wants to or ever could understand. I’m just trying to say that explaining myself feels like sending instructions to aliens.