Meeting the bug-eyed aliens...

I read this article the other day: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11041449.  It talked about the suggestion that folks ought to expand the search for extra-terrestrial life to include "sentient machines" and not just biological life. And this got me thinking. Who is doing the looking?  And has anyone really granted them the right to look? Let me explain. 


I'm an optimist, and I've been bred on my fair share of well-intentioned  aliens.  But  for every pointy-eared stoic Vulcan who has taught us something about being human, there is a menagerie of fanged, slavering, bug-eyed, ice-cold, robotic-limbed, cybernetically enhanced, disappearing, mind-reading, probing, spindly-fingered creatures that has given us the shivers.  And while trying to assess any possible intelligent life out there through an anthropomorphic lens of 'good' and 'evil' may be silly, it still begs one to wonder if contacting these intelligent beings may not be in our best interest.  After all, most humans don't consider themselves evil for tromping over ants in our path or eating chicken.  What if the alien beings who may be out there just consider our little planet a yummy source of food or fuel, or just another rock in the way of a Galactic Super Highway (shout-out to Douglas Adams!)?  Do we really want to be letting these critters know we're out here?


And this brings me to my main point: Considering the potential hazards of signalling our existence, has anyone asked humanity for its collective permission to seek out alien life-forms?  Generally speaking, we don't really take the folks looking for aliens too seriously. But this means that there has never been a referendum to determine if such a search is a good idea or not.  For something that could have huge implications (for better or for worse) for everyone on this planet, we have not really stopped to ask if this is ok with the rest of humanity.  There has been no vote on whether all of us, or even if most of us, want to find or contact alien intelligence.  And if/when this does happen, we may be asking ourselves one big question: who the hell signed off on this?