A group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists are seriously studying the public interest in unidentified flying objects, seeing this as a potential for technological progress.
Humanity has been preparing for the first contact with aliens for more than half a century. The pursuit of traces of extraterrestrial life visits to our planet began with the beginning of the space age and continues to this day. For example, a recently published map of UFO sightings in the US showed which states are more likely to report "contacts" (Vermont leads).
According to Vice, California has developed a professional approach to possible alien invasions: investors are looking for practical benefits from a close acquaintance with UFOs. In particular, they hope to figure out how silent "flying saucers" are piloted. Silicon entrepreneur Rizwan Virk, founder of the Play Labs project at MIT, sees UFOs as attractive to technologists and engineers. “I am interested in this phenomenon because I believe that official science has discovered maybe 5% of the truth about the universe, and the remaining 95% is still hidden from us,” says Wirk.
In his opinion, the study of UFOs questioned the principles of the possible and the impossible, since space neighbors probably have advanced technologies that do not yet fit into our model of the universe. In addition, Virk is confident that intuitive solutions are behind the breakthrough in the field of technology, which makes science and "unscientific" research of extraterrestrial life related. The investor agrees that there are still few people in solidarity with him in Silicon Valley, and UFOs are still an inconvenient topic of conversation. But everyone is calm about fantasies and hobbies.
View of Silicon Valley.
According to philosophy professor Diana Pasulka, author of American Outer Space: UFOs, Religion, Technology, much of the modern discourse on extraterrestrial civilizations contains religious aspects. The UFO phenomenon combines divinity and technology and relies on the scientific possibility that alien civilizations may well exist somewhere in the universe.
Unidentified flying objects burst into popular culture so rapidly that they were able to challenge the established systems of politics, economics and science, Pasulka writes. In Silicon Valley, enthusiasts have concentrated, who found themselves not only in stamping startups, but also in dreams of contacts with UFOs. One of the most famous ufologists can be considered Jacques Vallee - a venture capitalist who worked on the ARPANET project, which became the basis for the creation of the Internet. Vallee is not alone: there are indeed people among engineering scientists who believe in UFOs or unexplained phenomena and dream of how alien technologies will benefit humanity as soon as it gains access to them.
Advanced science is changing people's attitudes towards the impossible. For example, James Lumpkin, vice president of programming at ESL, finds the idea of a UFO intriguing. According to him, "the consequences of such (extraterrestrial) technologies seem amazing, revolutionary, regardless of who created them." He complains that the media is too superficial in covering issues related to the search for extraterrestrial civilizations.
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Deep Prasad, founder of multi-million dollar startup ReactiveQ, of Toronto shares James Lumpkin's opinion. According to the Canadian, the study of alien technology can finally open the way for mankind to distant stars.
Rizwan Virk clarifies that despite the UFO craze, most Silicon Valley investors are not going to invest in relevant research, or at least not publicly. Exclusively due to the fact that they are not sure of the profit. Investing in hypothetical visits from aliens willing to share the secrets of space travel with humanity is a risky business
ELENA FOMINA