Mike Williams wrote:

Wasn't it Tony Sivori who wrote:

The size of the universe is such that it is inconceivable that we are the
only technological beings in existence. Yet that same immense size that
assures we are not the only ones also insures that it is improbable that we
will interact with, or even detect them.

One significant difference is that sharks don't have technology, so
their numbers are kept in balance by factors such as the availability of
suitable prey and their innate ability to catch it.

And another point is that we have to consider the possibility that technologies
a few thousand years older than ours might be doing things which would make
them much more obvious, even at interstellar distances, than are sharks a mile
or two out to sea.

If we're talking about civilizations, we shouldn't be talking presence or
absence of sharks.  We should be talking presence or absence of New York City.
 

The numbers of a star-travelling technological species may only be
limited by the amount of real estate they occupy.

Or can manufacture.  And it's when you allow that possibility that the
end-conclusions get really interesting.

http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/alone.htm

-- 


Regards,
Mike Combs
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We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the
best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the
Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely.
Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable - the best site is
"somewhere else entirely."

			Gerard O'Neill - "The High Frontier"