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    Nnreading Response 1 5172023

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    The document discusses the Golden Record, a time capsule created by NASA and launched aboard the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. The record contained sounds and images from Earth intended to portray human civilization to any intelligent extraterrestrials who might encounter the Voyagers. While the intended audience of aliens was hypothetical, the record's creators hoped to convey their message without relying on context about human civilization. They included visuals and instructions instead of words. The record also served as a symbol of unity during the Cold War, holding up the best of humanity. Overall, the Golden Record celebrated what makes humans through a message independent of any specifics about its hypothetical receivers.

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    Nnreading Response 1 5172023

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    The document discusses the Golden Record, a time capsule created by NASA and launched aboard the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. The record contained sounds and images from Earth intended to portray human civilization to any intelligent extraterrestrials who might encounter the Voyagers. While the intended audience of aliens was hypothetical, the record's creators hoped to convey their message without relying on context about human civilization. They included visuals and instructions instead of words. The record also served as a symbol of unity during the Cold War, holding up the best of humanity. Overall, the Golden Record celebrated what makes humans through a message independent of any specifics about its hypothetical receivers.

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    nnreading response 1 5172023

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    The document discusses the Golden Record, a time capsule created by NASA and launched aboard the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. The record contained sounds and images from Earth intended to portray human civilization to any intelligent extraterrestrials who might encounter the Voyagers. While the intended audience of aliens was hypothetical, the record's creators hoped to convey their message without relying on context about human civilization. They included visuals and instructions instead of words. The record also served as a symbol of unity during the Cold War, holding up the best of humanity. Overall, the Golden Record celebrated what makes humans through a message independent of any specifics about its hypothetical receivers.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    20 views2 pages

    Nnreading Response 1 5172023

    Uploaded by

    api-671094184
    The document discusses the Golden Record, a time capsule created by NASA and launched aboard the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. The record contained sounds and images from Earth intended to portray human civilization to any intelligent extraterrestrials who might encounter the Voyagers. While the intended audience of aliens was hypothetical, the record's creators hoped to convey their message without relying on context about human civilization. They included visuals and instructions instead of words. The record also served as a symbol of unity during the Cold War, holding up the best of humanity. Overall, the Golden Record celebrated what makes humans through a message independent of any specifics about its hypothetical receivers.

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    ENC 1102: English Composition II

    17 May 2023

    Reading Response 1: Rhetorical Situation

    The twin Voyagers are a pair of spacecrafts launched in 1977 by NASA to “extend the…

    exploration of the solar system beyond the neighborhood of the outer planets to the outer limits

    of the Sun's sphere of influence, and possibly beyond” (“Interstellar Mission”). Over the course

    of their now almost 46-year long trip through our galaxy, these spacecrafts have bestowed upon

    us valuable information into the happenings of our solar system. The Voyagers, however, were

    also created to serve, as author of “In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective: A Reflection on

    Living Through Turbulent Times”, Maria Popova, puts it, a more romantic purpose (4).

    Headed by Dr. Carl Sagan, an astronomer and professor at Cornell University, an

    initiative was proposed to create a time capsule meant to “convey our essence as a civilization to

    some other [alien] civilization” (Popova 6). This initiative resulted in the creation of the Golden

    Record, a pair of gold-coated vinyl containing “115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such

    as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals,… musical selections

    from different cultures and eras,… spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages,

    and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim” (“What are

    the contents of the Golden Record?”).

    Some of the most important aspects of any rhetorical situation are the audience to which

    one is conveying their message and the context behind which their message stands. The specific

    situation underlying the creation of the Golden Record is especially particular because of the fact

    that both of those aspects were essentially stripped from the record’s creators. The audience to
    which this message was to be relayed was essentially hypothetical and as such, they could not

    have any context regarding human civilization. Carl Sagan himself stated that “the spacecraft

    will be encountered, and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in

    interstellar space.” With our current technology, we still have little evidence of life on other

    celestial bodies, let alone intelligent life. Since the audience to which this record is addressed has

    never been truly “real” to us, the team working on the record could not rely on knowledge or

    context about alien civilizations to inform how they approached delivering their message, nor

    could they rely on alien civilizations having any context about humans. As a result, rather than

    using words to convey their message, they decided to use images and symbols in hopes of

    getting their point across. Engraved upon the records are, amongst other things, instructions on

    how it is meant to be operated. The scientists who worked on the record hoped that, once

    operated, aliens would view the romanticized images and audio with intrigue and wonder.

    Popova, in her essay, also proposes another purpose behind the creation of the Golden

    Record: “to mirror what is best of humanity back to itself in the middle of the Cold War” (6).

    With this interpretation, both the audience and the context shift, and the Golden Record acts as a

    token of unity amongst people. This wistful idea to converse with the theoretical now changed

    into a mirror reflecting back the humanity of those who had lost sight of one another’s. All in all,

    the purpose of this record was a simple one: celebrate what makes us human. With that purpose

    set in stone, the audience and context behind the situation stripped away, and a capsule filled

    with the magnificent spectrum of human experience was left behind. (598 Words)

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