our physical bodies to the world of forms. Michael Heine (1991:  64),  for example, sees cyberspace in terms of the Platonic world of forms, the world of ‘inFORMation’:

Cyberspace is Platonism as a working product. The cybernaut seated before us, strapped into sensory input devices, appears to be, and is in-deed, lost to this world. Suspended in computer space, the cybernaut leaves the prison of the body and emerges in a world of digital sensa-tion.

This imagery invokes Plato’s cave allegory, according to which the prisoners, when released from their fictitious existence in the cave, ascend to the realm of active thought. In Heine’s example, however, the prisoners simply don the sensory apparatus attached to the computer and engage in the world of inFORMation. Such arguments omit something of greater significance in Plato’s thought. For Plato described an artificial world where prisoners chained together in a cave, unable to interact with the physical world and each other, would project their fantasies onto the shadows on the walls of their prison. Unable to move, interact with each other and the world around them, they were unable to test whether their fantasies corresponded with reality and were consequently doomed to a life of ignorance. The cybernaut, strapped to sensory input devices is in many respects more akin to the enslaved prisoners in the cave, unable to interact with anything beyond the information provided by the computer. Participation in a world of active thought requires interaction with embodied minds, physical objects, in the real world. Like the inhabitants of Plato’s cave, electronic communicators will require to move in a real world lest their fantasies overtake them. Information transfer without travel may lead to a system of knowledge – undoubtedly linked to a system of political authority – wherein the truths of the galaxy are as worthless as the truths of the cave. If contact is made with ETI, communication imitative of our terrestrial modem culture is to be avoided at all costs.

Is Fermi’s Paradox due to the wrong model of galactic colonization?

According to David. G. Stephenson (1980), Fermi’s Paradox is a product of a particular model of galactic colonization. A different model, he argues, need not produce a paradox whereby the galaxy is teeming with intelligent life of which there is no evidence within the solar system. Most models of galactic colonization, says Stephenson (1980: 248), assume that interstellar colonies will have a life cycle paralleling that of a virus, where the ‘virus or an interstellar vessel, travel through an alien medium with most of the information in a dormant state and being irrelevant to the surrounding conditions’. When it  reaches  a  suitable place the information is activated and put to use in its new environment. The

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human equivalent of this model is the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European emigration to the USA where the immigrants took with them skills and information which were of no value on the journey, but were essential in modifying the New World in order to replicate some of the conditions they had left behind in Europe. The ‘virus’ model presents an image of colonists travelling from planet to planet in a state of limbo but then on arrival setting up colonies similar to the home environment, or at least seeking out planets offering a similar environment to the one they have left. This model is reinforced with accounts of the vast distances in interstellar space, which suggest that the travellers live very long lives or have acquired techniques of hibernation. Once this model is adopted, the absence of colonies can then be cited in support of claims regarding human uniqueness. But Stephenson considers an alternative model which avoids Fermi’s Paradox.

Instead of a passive journey where the vessel is merely a means of transporting beings with a dormant capacity to activate information on arrival, Stephenson’s model depicts the vessel as an equivalent to a higher organism in a constant state of activity, with its information relevant and in use. In short, the vessel would be a travelling biosphere, a permanent ark, in which its inhabitants are completely integrated. The vessel might even grow on the journey, drawing material on the way. It would not be a mere means of transporting beings from embarkation to destination, it would be the home of its inhabitants, adapting to conditions wherever it went. Not requiring settlements at either end of the journey, the human analogy is a nomadic tribe that has adapted to an environ-ment that fulfils its needs as long as they are mobile. Such a community would not require planetary colonies and would be unlikely to visit us. There could be, suggests Stephenson, thousands of interstellar vehicles of this type throughout space and undetected.

Now Fermi’s Paradox arose because the ‘virus’ model of colonization suggested that extraterrestrials, like eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europeans, would inevitably end up in the New World after populating all corners of the Earth-galaxy. But a galaxy teeming with interstellar vehicles which  are  independent homes would not lead to the colonization of the Earth.

Are there any observable predictions in Stephenson’s thesis? Stephenson’s proposal not only avoids Fermi’s Paradox, it also predicts likely zones for the detection of their vessels. Thus in our solar system, he suggests (1980: 248–9),

[T]he search should concentrate on the outermost bodies of the Solar System as being the closest to the interstellar space. It is an interesting speculation that an unusual orbit and planetary parameters of Pluto might, in part, be due to the activities of visiting interstellar craft that have reduced the body from a conventional outer planet to a cosmic slag tip of unwanted elements.

(ibid.: 249)

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