2010 Keynote Speaker:
Albert A Harrison - University of California, Davis

Are We Prepared?
Fifty Years of Waiting for E.T.

In 1960, recognition of the feasibility of interstellar communication coupled with the Project Ozma, the first radiotelescope search, influenced the Brookings Report to the US Congress on the potential uses of outer space. The report expected that the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence could constitute a crisis, noting that "many societies sure of their place in the universe had disintegrated when confronted by a superior society."

To better understand and manage people’s reactions to the discovery, the report recommended ongoing studies of human attitudes and behavior. Since that time historical analogues, public opinion polls, and research on stress have been used to help anticipate reactions to the discovery of a civilization many light years away. Because of the vast changes in science, religion, and popular culture over the past 50 years, people of today are likely to react quite differently than people of five decades ago.

Albert A. Harrison is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. He has been studying spaceflight human factors for over thirty years and has been interested in the behavioral side of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, since 1990. In 2002, he added planetary defense (protection of Earth from asteroids and comets) to the mix. He has written several books on humans in space and on the psychological aspects of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, most recently, "Starstruck: Cosmic Visions in Science Religion and Folklore (Berghahn, 2007. A confirmed "contactee" since 1986, he mantains that Contact offers an unparalleled forum for exploring new ideas as well as a thoroughly enjoyable educational and social event.