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T A B L E__T A L K Do programmers think differently than the rest of civilization? Join the discussion on hackers in Table Talk's Digital Cul ture area - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Web-ability By Mike Britten Even people who aren't in the position to enjoy all the Web's bells and whistles ought to be able to access its information (05/05/98) The gene genie By Jeffrey Obser Jeremy Rifkin's new book, "The Biotech Century," warns of a genetic-bazaar future. (05/05/98) Groveling for dollars By Greg Costikyan Bugs, babes and booze: For game developers rustling up financing, there's a million potholes on the road to success (05/01/98) The 21st Challenge No. 8 Results By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau (05/01/98) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Playboy and Playmate play a game of meta tag. (05/01/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - -

The geeks and the aliens Why are the tech industry's best and brightest so determined to spearhead the hunt for extraterrestrials? - - - - - - - - - - - - BY JANELLE BROWN There are an estimated 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and an estimated half trillion galaxies in the universe. Going by sheer numbers, the odds are that somewhere out there intelligent life exists -- or so say the astronomers at the SETI Institute. SETI, which stands for "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence," points telescopes into outer space and listens for mysterious radio signals. This is the group made famous last year by the maudlin Jodie Foster film "Contact," and yes, they are hoping someday -- soon -- to tune in little green men. In that quest, SETI has quietly been joined by some of the biggest names in high tech: Paul Allen, Gordon Moore, William Hewlett, the late David Packard and Nathan Myhrvold. Some are donating money, others are donating brain power -- and some are even working to harness your computer to help process SETI's data. "Visionaries" from Sun, Intel, Microsoft and Disney's Imagineering pop up all over SETI's documents. All told, geeks are keeping the search for aliens alive. As Myhrvold puts it, "In a way it is a 'natural' progression. It is the ultimate extrapolation of our current technological world." Although astronomers have spearheaded small-scale attempts to contact extraterrestrials since 1959, SETI began its official life inside NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., in 1971 with a study called Project Cyclops. Written in part by Barney Oliver, the renowned director of Hewlett Packard Labs, Project Cyclops put forth the proposition that, thanks to modern radio-telescope technology, earthlings could scan the sky for distant civilizations by detecting the microwave signals radiated by their transmitters. Explains SETI astronomer Dan Werthimer: "'I Love Lucy' left here years ago and has gone past a few thousand stars. Only the nearby stars have seen 'The Simpsons.' The earth is brighter than the sun at television frequencies. All this stuff leaks off our planet unintentionally, so it's possible that other civilizations have technology at least at our capability -- or maybe they're millions or billions of years up on us -- and they would unintentionally leak stuff off their planet." Twenty years after Project Cyclops set out the initial proposal, the "High-Resolution Microwave Survey" finally began scanning the skies in 1992. A year later, Congress pulled the funding -- primarily because of the protests of an earthbound Nevada senator, Richard Bryan, who just didn't see the point in spending public money ($12 million, at that point) to find "little green men." That's when Silicon Valley stepped in. N E X T_P A G E | Turning the übergeeks' childhood obsessions into hard science