Suppose you are contacted by advanced being from another planet. They want to learn all they can about our species, and specifically our culture.

What’s the quickest way to give them the most information on our culture and our society?

You could give them a set of encyclopedias, but that just gives information without any commentary, and it’s about the mechanics of the world in general, as opposed to the nuances of our culture.

You could point them to the Internet, but it’s not really something they could take with them, and there’s too much useless information to filter out.

I would hook them up with DVDs of The Simpsons. It is loaded with cultural information and would, provided they understood the nuances of humor, give them a pretty balanced view of us as a people.

What would you do?

Comments

Nathan Mulford said…
I agree that the internet and an encyclopedia would be bad choices, but if I had to choose a source it would probably be Charles in Charge because I feel that Scott Baio exemplifies all that is good and just in the universe. Plus with him in charge there all of other hostile alien life forms would be really scared of us.
July 17, 2007 at 9:24 AM
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