Alien Memo

What the hell is this?



Apparently, we sent this memo up with the Voyager spacecraft back in 1977 as a way to show potential aliens how to play a record that came along with the spacecraft. My problem comes from that fact that we're trying to show some Being how to play a record who, if they are intelligent enough to find the record, has probably developed a completely different means of communicating than us. So, how can we presuppose that they know what any of this means?

Yeah, we can look at it and go "oh yeah, that's a record and that's the needle you'd use to scrap the record with in order to produce the sound" (unless you were born way after I was and have no idea what these record things are, in that case Wiki up "vinyl record" and you will be amazed at what you find, plus I'll allow you to be my friend again since not knowing what a record is makes me ashamed of knowing you), but how is some completely different life form with a completely different means of communicating going to look at that and think the same thing.

It does look pretty cool though and the thought of an alien memo is kind of cool as well, however until we bump paths I don't think communication will exist between life forms (even though I did like the concept in the movie Contact, but alas, that is just a movie).