A short time ago my mother emailed me some astounding screen shots she had taken of bald eagles. Aside from appreciating the pictures, she thought it might inspire some artwork on my part, and it certainly did. She also provided me with a link to the website she had procured them from, which I immediately found fascinating. It belongs to the Raptor Resource Project, a nonprofit organization which aims to preserve raptor populations. They set up various HD cameras focused on an eagle’s nest in the the city of Decorah, Iowa, allowing anyone to monitor them through online streaming 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Certainly, this is not the only project of its kind, but it was the first time I was aware of such a thing. It made sense, though. After all, the less influence we have on the animals we are striving to preserve and understand the more we consequently preserve, the better our quality of understanding, so this is a natural progression.
As intriguing as I found it to be that anyone around the world could hop online and observe — covertly, at a distance and around the clock — animals in their natural habitat, however, it also produced this knot in my stomach.
Long ago I noticed that when any mainstream scientist speculated out loud about the potential nature of extraterrestrial life, they presumed they were of one of two extreme natures equally distant from us. If they weren’t microbial life, than they must be extremely more advanced than us, a Type III civilization that would look upon us and our civilization much as we might look at a colony of ants on around alongside a highway. They never seem to contemplate the possibility that the distances between us and some ETI might be more akin to our relationship to monkeys, octopuses, or even eagles.
And if we can monitor these creatures covertly, at a distance and around the clock through some high-tech communication system beyond the reach of their understanding, perhaps we are subject to similar monitoring by a network of advanced ETI.
As I watch the Decorah eagles on my laptop, I wonder if they ever have the feeling that they’re being watched, as I often do.
Transmissions to Earth 