Should Alien technology be kept secret? or not?

I think perhaps Merkeva you are thinking in too grand of scale. We could not easily learn whole technologies from recovered craft. All we could get would be materials, little bits of concepts, and most importantly inspiration.

I only see a handful of basic concepts as being inspired by recovered materials, but those ideas helped to spawn a revolution. The transistor, Stealth material, fiber optics, just those three alone are staggering in their potential. But two of the three took many years to really understand and produce.

For me the largest effect that anything alien in origin has had has been in the area of inspiration. Being handed absolute proof of something forces your mind to open up to new possibilities. It got us thinking on the cosmic scale and pushed us along at a new pace.

In answer to the central question of this thread, I am officially in the 'It should not be kept secret any longer' camp. Yes we have to plan how to handle any changes, and those plans should be drawn up wisely. But enough of us are ready enough that for me, the time has come, the children we were in the 1940s are not who we are today.

It would be nice to get together to discuss something with so many positive potentials for once. Rather than the usual which is how can we make what little we have or can do go as far as possible.


A.T
(-)


[edit on 6/15/05 by Alexander Tau]

We would all be pretty naive to think out of this whole universe, that we "planet earth" are alone. The government is the one that screwed up by keeping it secret. Now they have a dilemma as to how to let people know without anybody flipping out over it. All of the ancient drawings of crafts and flying objects where displayed openly. But in our world it has been kept a secret from the people, why????

Originally posted by cruella
We would all be pretty naive to think out of this whole universe, that we "planet earth" are alone. The government is the one that screwed up by keeping it secret. Now they have a dilemma as to how to let people know without anybody flipping out over it. All of the ancient drawings of crafts and flying objects where displayed openly. But in our world it has been kept a secret from the people, why????

Maybe you should ask that question to the government and maybe we would get somewhere!!

The real question is why, if they are coming here, have the aliens kept their presence and, most importantly of all, their intentions a secret?

They apparently take some care to avoid detection, though not entirely.

They take extreme measures to preclude any mutually beneficial open conversation, and that bothers me more.

The assumption that they are benign may be misguided. Certainly an ethical alien species would recognize the suspicion that a lesser technologically developed society would have towards a visiting alien, and take all measures to prevent malevolent misunderstanding. Open and reciprocal communication is key. They would try to ask, "hi, how do you want to interact with us?" in public.

They have done no such thing. They either don't understand us or are utterly unconcerned with our desires or autonomy; autism on a species scale.

If we were capable of traveling to other stars and we visited a technological civilization which was limited though to that planet, would we behave as they did? No. Despite all of our terrible problems at home, when we would go somewhere else, we'd put our best face forward. We'd carefully and slowly make contact and offer diplomatic relations.

I think that there aren't that many government UFO secrets to cover up, other than "we have no idea what's going on, what they're doing, why they're such jerks. And we can't stop them."

That, not the presence of ETs by itself, would be bad for society.

There's the other possibility that the governments have been ordered by the ET aliens to assist in the ET-initiated coverup, and the penalty for disobedience could be catastrophic.

Originally posted by mbkennel
They have done no such thing. They either don't understand us or are utterly unconcerned with our desires or autonomy; autism on a species scale.

So you're pretty much saying that they are just trying to figure out what the purpose of the earth and us is or they don't know and don't want to know?

Originally posted by Gazrok
Just think if you introduced a cheap, reliable, non-polluting engine that didn't run on fossil fuels....

Well, lets see... First, we'd have the carmakers scramble to integrate it. They'd retool, maybe even fire/hire new workers, etc. all costing them money, to be passed on to you the buyer.

Next, we see those nations exporting oil....and their economies collapse. All they have is weapons, so they war with their neighbors for THEIR resources.

Then, we see service stations, oil companies, etc. go suddenly out of business, and of course all these folks are without jobs, bringing us all into a Depression, etc.

Gazrok, you have to this point seemed to be a person of reason until
now. The fear that may exist amongst the elite can not be more important
than knowing the truth.

Originally posted by Gazrok
Advanced tech, whether alien or not, has to be introduced along with an economic plan in order to minimize the disruption of society as a whole. You have to take in the BIG picture, lest you find yourself in the bread lines....

Advanced tech would become (will become) the industry of the future.
You cannot prevent change. I suppose you can attempt to schedule it but
eventually you have give way. The folks with the $$$green$$$ will have
their bids in way before we know about what’s going to come down.
Their future will always be assured.

Ours however???

Originally posted by Gazrok

imagine that we did find alien craft etc, and the current world we live in already contains all the alien technology they had.

kind of a let down no?

Well, at the very least, they'd have an interstellar drive....

That could be the ONLY invention they've one-upped us on, for all we know....

Ah yes I did forget that dandy.

But.... What if the craft was no better than any engine / probe / craft that NASA has produced?

which didn't run on fossil fuels???

The military would LOVE that. They'd screw the oil companies in an instant. And have Saudi Arabia turn back into nomadic goat herders? All the better.

Procurement and logistics of moving fuel are a critical limitation of military operations these days. Anything to help that would be magnificent.

Think about all the massive contracts that would flow to Boeing, Lockheed, GE---along with jobs in every Congressional District---to develop this new magic technology.

My conclusion is sadly that no such thing exists.

And who's to say that if there are ET aliens, that their engines are "free" and "nonpolluting"?

Maybe they run on some exotic nuclear power which is massively dangerous to humans and they're genetically engineered to withstand high radiation. And the fuel is expensively mined from asteroids or something.

But.... What if the craft was no better than any engine / probe / craft that NASA has produced?

Then they'd easily defeat us with their uncanny sense of patience...

I think no tech of alien origin would released to the public. Too much corporate greed and ties to the powers that be. A cure for aids or cancer would eliminate the need for certain medical institutions and insurance firms to justify the millions that they get now. I agree that such tech should be kept from certain nations as some of you stated above. Gazrok's point of the economic upheaval is not without validity. Things would need to trickle into the mainstream in order to educate and adjust the populace, both corporate and private, to keep people working and their lives stable.

If tech has or was released it was probably something innocuous like velcro or gum that has a liquid center.

[edit on 16-6-2005 by Der Kapitan]

Originally posted by Alexander Tau
I think perhaps Merkeva you are thinking in too grand of scale. We could not easily learn whole technologies from recovered craft. All we could get would be materials, little bits of concepts, and most importantly inspiration.

Alex, If you read my post you'd see i was saying something very similar, if anything after reading the rest of the posts i'd say im thinking on to small a scale as you and other pointed out, concepts would be the most valueble aquisition.

Materials on the other hand would not go far being limited to the source, unless we can fabricate them and as i pointed out that could be very hard indeed depending on what resources are needed. Also im sure some of these concepts would need these materials to be applied.

As for fiber optics coming from alien tech thats just untrue , Alexander Graham Bell himself patented an optical telephone, in fact it goes back even further than that to the 1790's when a french engineer Claude Chappe invented his "optical telegraph", just two good examples that useing light for communications has been knocking around for two centuries, the birth of this tech is well documented.

History of fiber optics : www.sff.net...