by Eric W. Austin

In an age where artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly integrates into our daily lives, from virtual assistants to autonomous vehicles, the question of what constitutes ‘intelligence’ becomes increasingly relevant. Is it the ability to solve complex problems, the capacity for creative thought, or something more elusive?

When we witness machines performing tasks once thought exclusive to humans, it challenges our traditional understanding of intelligence. This leads us to ponder: can machines truly ‘think’, or are they merely simulating a facet of human cognition? As we venture deeper into this era of advanced AI, it’s crucial to explore not only how we define intelligence but also the implications of attributing such a quality to machines. This exploration raises profound questions about our perceptions of intelligence and the potential risks of misjudging the line between genuine cognitive abilities on one hand, and sophisticated programming on the other.

Defining intelligence has long been a subject of debate among psychologists, neuroscientists, and AI researchers. Intelligence in humans is often gauged by the ability to learn, adapt to new situations, understand complex concepts, and apply logical reasoning. Psychological assessments, like IQ tests, attempt to quantify these abilities, though they remain subject to debate regarding their comprehensiveness and bias. In the realm of AI, intelligence takes on a different hue – it’s about the ability of machines to perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence. This includes pattern recognition, language understanding, and decision-making. However, this technological mimicry begs the question: does the replication of human-like problem-solving denote true intelligence, or is it merely a sophisticated imitation? The distinction is crucial, as it shapes our understanding of AI’s role and potential in our society.

Consider a straightforward scenario: a man is tasked with delivering boxes from Point A to Point B. Upon arrival, his job involves carrying the boxes up a flight of stairs to a designated spot. This task, while simple, is generally perceived as one carried out by an intelligent agent – a human. Now, imagine automating a part of this process: at the destination, a conveyor belt is introduced. Instead of manually carrying the boxes upstairs, the man places them on the conveyor belt, which completes the task. Although the end result is the same, attributing intelligence to the conveyor belt seems illogical. This suggests that the mere completion of a task, initially performed by a human, doesn’t inherently transfer the attribute of intelligence to the machine.

On the other hand, consider a task undeniably associated with human intelligence: writing a poem in iambic pentameter. This creative endeavor requires not just linguistic skill but also emotional depth, creativity, and an understanding of complex literary techniques. If we were to replace the human poet with a machine capable of crafting a comparable poem, does the achievement of this task by the machine signify intelligence? This juxtaposition of tasks, from the mundane to the highly complex, raises a pivotal question: Is the distinction we draw between these tasks in terms of intelligence merely a matter of their complexity, or is there a deeper criterion at play in our perception of what constitutes ‘intelligent’ action?

As we turn our gaze to the present capabilities of AI, we find a landscape teeming with advancements that once bordered on the realms of science fiction. Today’s AI systems can diagnose diseases, translate languages in real-time, create stunning artwork, and even write articles like this one. The complexity and sophistication of these tasks are escalating rapidly, pushing the boundaries of what we thought machines could achieve. Does the ability of AI to perform these complex tasks equate to intelligence? Or are these systems still operating within the realm of advanced algorithms and data processing, lacking the essence of true cognitive understanding?

The concept of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) takes this discussion a step further. AGI refers to a machine’s ability to understand, learn, and apply its intelligence to a wide range of problems, much like a human brain. Unlike specialized AI designed for specific tasks, AGI embodies the flexibility and adaptability of human intellect. The pursuit of AGI raises profound questions: If a machine can mimic the broad cognitive abilities of a human, does it then possess ‘intelligence’ in the true sense? And how do we reconcile this with our earlier distinctions between simple automation and genuine intelligence?

As AI continues to evolve and blur the lines between programmed efficiency and cognitive ability, we find ourselves grappling with the very nature of intelligence. From the simplicity of a conveyor belt to the complex potential of AGI, our understanding of intelligence is continually being challenged and redefined. This article does not seek to provide definitive answers but rather to provoke reflection on what it means to be intelligent, both in humans and machines.

As we witness the rapid advancement of AI technologies, the question remains open for interpretation and contemplation: What truly defines intelligence, and how close are we to witnessing its embodiment in the machines of tomorrow?

Screenshot of actual text message that tricked my mom.

by Eric W. Austin

Well, my mother got scammed on the internet, again. Last week, she received a text on her phone claiming to be from the shipping company UPS. The text message said they “were unable to complete your delivery due [to] incomplete address,” and included a website link for her to schedule a new delivery. The link took her to a website with the UPS logo and asked her to enter her credit card information to pay for a $1.14 “redelivery fee”.

When she told me about it later in the day, I immediately found the incident suspicious. I receive packages from UPS all the time and have never been required to pay for a redelivery. She also told me she got the text at 4 a.m., but who is doing deliveries at that time of day? I asked her to show me the text message. It came from an “unknown” number, and the link they provided was a shortcut — a link designed to redirect someone from a short URL to a longer, more complex address. This one started with “bit.ly”, which is a common provider of URL shortcuts. That doesn’t mean that any similar link is automatically suspicious, since there are many credible people and organizations who use this service to shorten links shared on social media, but scammers will use this method to disguise the fact that they are sending you to an illegitimate website.

On her phone, this link had sent her to a webpage with an address beginning with “www45.”. I was not able to discover exactly what this prefix means, but the first Google result referencing a similar address came from a user complaining about getting a virus from it.

When I forwarded the text message to my own computer and opened the link in my browser, it did not take me to a faux UPS website, as it had on her phone, but instead opened to a different random website each time I clicked on it, which my browser’s anti-malware security software automatically killed as a safety precaution before I could even view its content. I believe the link in the text message was programmed only to open to the fake UPS site when launched on a smart phone, because that was the platform they were targeting. (It should be noted, I emphatically do not recommend anyone click on such a link, as it could potentially install a virus on your computer, but I was curious about where it would take me and I have precautions installed on my PC and know how to deal with a virus if I get one. For everyone else: never click on a suspicious link!)

Although I couldn’t find an exact match to this scam on the official UPS website, they did acknowledge awareness of similar scams on their FAQ page.

Based on this brief analysis, I think there is no question that this text was sent to my mother by a scammer and it was not actually from UPS about a package delivery. We called her bank and canceled her credit card. A new card should arrive in a few weeks and, according to the bank, no unauthorized charges had been made on her account. It’s inconvenient but no lasting harm was done.

But why did my mom fall for it? She’s a smart lady and is well-aware of the prevalence of scammers who frequently prey on senior citizens like her. Part of the reason, I think, is the fact that she was expecting a package and that delivery was late. “How did they know I was expecting a package?” she asked incredulously when I told her I thought she had been the victim of a scam.

And I think this reaction is the key to why she was duped. She was expecting a package, it was late, and the text seemed to fit into the pattern she was expecting to see. How did the scammer know she was expecting a delivery? Did they steal her order information from Amazon or UPS? I recommended she change her Amazon password just in case, but I’m not sure the scammer had any special knowledge about her ordering habits.

We live in the age of Amazon and other online retailers. In any given week, I am probably expecting a package. We don’t realize just how often most of us regularly receive items through the mail. Something that was fairly rare two decades ago has become a commonplace occurrence today. I suspect this scammer sent a similar text message to thousands (maybe millions?) of people, and (I’m guessing here) maybe 80 percent of them are anticipating the receipt of a package from somewhere at some point during the week. Although it’s possible the scammer hacked Amazon or the UPS website and stole my mother’s information as part of an effort to target her, I think it’s more likely they just got lucky in the timing of their text message.

Hopefully, this article can serve as a reminder to everyone to be aware of such predatory behavior. Seniors seem to be especially targeted by these scammers. My mother frequently receives phone calls on her landline from people who claim to be one of her grandchildren and in desperate need of cash. She’s learned not to trust such calls. Now, she will be wary of suspicious texts too. If you are one of these older folks, be suspicious! Ask your kids for advice if you have a concern. If you are a younger person, look out for your parents and grandparents. Speak to them about these issues and caution them to be watchful.

And it’s always a good practice to avoid clicking on links in emails or text messages unless you are certain the source is trustworthy.

Email the author at ericwaustin@gmail.com.

King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human (1986)

by Eric W. Austin

It was sometime in the mid-1980s when my father took me to a technology expo here in Maine. I think it was held in Lewiston, but it might have been some other place. (Before I got my driver’s license, I didn’t know where anything was.) This was at a time when you couldn’t buy a computer down at the local department store. You had to go to a specialty shop (of which there were few) or order the parts you needed through the mail. Or you could go to a local technology expo like we were doing.

They didn’t have fancy gadgets or shiny screens on display like you might see today. No, this was the age of hobbyists, who built their own computers at home. It was very much a DIY computer culture. As we walked through the expo, we passed booths selling hard drives and circuit boards. For a twelve-year-old kid, it wasn’t very exciting stuff. But then we passed a booth with a pile of videogames and my interest immediately piqued.

My father didn’t have much respect for computer games. Computers were for work in his view. Spreadsheets and taxes. Databases and word processing. But I was there for the games.

I dug through the bin of budget games and pulled out the box for a game called King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human. The game was released in 1986, so the expo must have taken place a year or two after that. The King’s Quest games were a popular series of adventure games released by the now defunct developer, Sierra On-Line.

Somehow I convinced my father to buy it for me, but when I got home I found to my disappointment that it was the PC DOS version of the game and would not play on my Apple II computer. I never did get a chance to play To Heir is Human (still one of the cleverest titles for a game ever!), but I never lost my fascination with the digital interactive experience of videogames.

The first videogames did not even involve video graphics. They were text adventure games. I remember playing The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Game (first released in 1984), which was a text adventure game based on the book series of the same name by Douglas Adams, on a PC in the computer lab at Winslow High School. These games did not have any graphics and everything was conveyed to the player by words on the screen. You would type simple commands like “look north” and the game would tell you there was a road leading away from you in that direction. Then you would type “go north” and it would describe a new scene. These games were like choose-your-own-adventure novels, but with infinitely more possibilities and endless fun. Who knew a bath towel could save your house from destruction or that you could translate alien languages by sticking a fish in your ear?

Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990)

One of my first indelible gaming experiences was playing Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (released 1990) in my father’s office on a Mac Lisa computer with a six-inch black and white screen. These sorts of games were commonly called “dungeon crawlers” because of their tendency to feature the player exploring an underground, enclosed space, searching for treasure and killing monsters. As was common for the genre at the time, the game worked on a tile-based movement system: press the forward key once, and your character moved forward one space on a grid. The environments for these types of games typically featured a labyrinthine structure, and part of the fun was getting lost. There was no in-game map system, so it was common for players to keep a stack of graph paper and a pencil next to their keyboard. With each step, you would draw a line on the graph paper and using this method you could map out your progress manually for later reference. Some games came with a map of the game world in the box. I remember that Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988) came with a beautiful cloth map, which I thought was the coolest thing ever included with a game.

As I grew up, so did the videogame industry. The graphics improved. The games became more complex. As their audiences matured, games flirted with issues of violence and sexuality. Games like Leisure Suit Larry (1987) pushed into adult territory with raunchy humor and sexual situations, while games like Wolfenstein 3D (1992) had you killing Nazis in an underground bunker in 1940s Germany, depicting violence like never before. These games created quite the controversies in their day from people who saw them as corrupt indicators of coming societal collapse.

Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

In 1996, I bought my first videogame console, the original PlayStation. At the time, Sony was taking a giant gamble, releasing a new console to compete with industry juggernauts like Nintendo and SEGA. The first PlayStation console was the result of a failed joint-effort between Sony and Nintendo to develop a CD-ROM peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), a console released in 1991 in North America. When that deal fell through, Sony decided to develop their own videogame system, and that eventually became the PlayStation.

There was a lot of debate during these years about the best medium for delivering content — solid-state cartridges, which were used for the SNES and the later Nintendo-64 (released 1996), or the new optical CD-ROMs used by Sony’s PlayStation. The cartridges used by Nintendo (and nearly every console released before 1995) featured faster data transfer speeds over optical CDs but had a smaller potential data capacity. Optical media won that debate, as the N-64 was the last major console to use a cartridge-based storage format for its games. Funnily enough, this debate has come full-circle in recent years, with the resurgence of cartridge-based storage solutions like flash drives and solid state hard drives. Those storage limitations of the past have mostly been solved, and solid state memory still offers faster data transfer rates over optical options like CD-ROMs or DVDs (or now Blu-Ray).

Star Wars arcade game (1983)

The PlayStation was also built from the ground up to process the new polygonal-based graphic technology that was becoming popular with computer games, instead of the old sprite-based graphics of the past. This was a graphical shift away from the flat, two dimensional visuals that had been the standard up to that point. This shift was an evolution that had taken place over a number of years. First, there was something called vector graphics, which were basically just line drawings in three-dimensional space. I remember playing a Star Wars arcade game (released 1983) with simple black and white vector graphics down at the arcade that used to be located next to The Landing, in China Village, when I was a kid. The game simulated the assault on the Death Star from the original 1977 movie and featured unique flight-stick controls that were very cool to a young kid who was a fan of the films.

Videogame consoles have changed a lot over the years. My cousin owned an SNES and used to bring it up to my house in the summers to play Contra and Super Mario World. Back then, the big names in the industry were Nintendo, SEGA and Atari. Nintendo is the only company from those days that is still in the console market.

Up until the late 1990s, each console was defined by its own unique library of games, with much of the development happening in-house by the console manufacturers. This has changed over the years so that nearly everything today is made by third-party developers and released on multiple platforms. In the early 2000s, when this trend was really taking off, many people theorized it would spell doom for the videogame console market because it was removing each console’s uniqueness, but that has not turned out to be the case.

Videogames are usually categorized into genres much like books or movies, but the genres which have been most popular have changed drastically over the years. Adventure games, usually focused on puzzles and story, ruled the day in the early 1980s. That gave way to roleplaying games (RPGs) through the mid-’90s, which were basically adventure games with increasingly complex character progression systems. With the release of Wolfenstein 3D from id Software in 1992, the world was introduced to the first person shooter (FPS) genre, which is still one of the most popular game types today.

The “first person perspective,” as this type of game is called in videogame parlance, had previously been used in dungeon crawlers like the Wizardry series (mentioned above) and Eye of the Beholder (1991), but Wolfenstein coupled this perspective with a type of action gameplay that proved immediately popular and enduring. Another game I played that would prove to be influential for these type of games was Marathon, an alien shooter game released in 1994 for the Apple Macintosh and developed by Bungie, a studio that would later go on to create the incredibly popular Halo series of games for Microsoft’s Xbox console.

One of the things I have always loved about videogames is the way the industry never sits still. It’s always pushing the boundaries of the interactive experience. Games are constantly being driven forward by improving technology and innovative developers who are searching for new ways to engage players. It is one of the most dynamic entertainment industries operating today. With virtual reality technology advancing quickly and promising immersive experiences like never before, and creative developers committed to exploring the possibilities of emergent gameplay afforded by more powerful hardware, I’m excited to see where the industry heads in the coming decades. If the last thirty-five years are any indication, it should be awesome!

Eric W. Austin writes about technology and community issues. Contact him by email at ericwaustin@gmail.com.

by Eric W. Austin

The world is filled with too much information. We are inundated with information during nearly every moment of every day. This is a problem because much of it is simply spin and misinformation, and it can be difficult to separate the quality information from the background noise that permeates the internet.

I think being successful in this endeavor comes down to two things: learning to discern the quality sources from the sketchy ones, and getting in the habit of viewing a variety of sources before leaping to conclusions.

Let’s deal with the first one: quality sources. How do you determine the good sources from the bad?

To visualize the problem we’re dealing with, imagine a perfect source as a dot in the middle of a blank page. This hypothetical source is unbiased and completely reliable. (There is, of course, no such source or I would simply recommend it to you and this would be a very short article.)

Now imagine each and every source on the internet as another dot on this page. The distance each source is from the center dot is an indication of greater bias and lower reliability.

Oh, but you might complain, this is such a highly subjective exercise! And you would be absolutely right. Judging the quality of information on the web is not a hard science; it is a skill you need to develop over time, but it is also a skill which has become more and more essential to life in the modern age.

As a part of this mental exercise it’s important to be aware of the subjective weaknesses inherent in the human condition that are likely to trip you up. For example, we are much more likely to judge sources which align with our existing views as less biased than those sources which do not. So, you need to compensate for that when drawing the mental picture that I described above.

When I was learning to drive, our driver’s education teacher emphasized the importance of looking at both side mirrors, the rearview mirror and glancing over my shoulder before making any move in traffic such as changing lanes. Why wasn’t it sufficient to rely on only a single method to judge the safety of an action before taking it? Because each method has a blind spot which can only be compensated for by employing more than one tactic prior to making a decision. Using overlapping sources of information decreases the chances of missing something important.

Judging information on the internet is kind of like that: no one method is going to be sufficient and each will have a particular blind spot which can only be counterbalanced by employing multiple solutions.

Certain online resources can help you with drawing a more accurate picture of the sources on which you rely. The website MediaBiasFactCheck.com assesses more than 3,600 websites and news sources for bias and credibility across the internet on both the right and the left. Allsides.com is another resource which rates the political bias of websites and often places news stories from the left and right side by side so you can see how specific information is being presented. Allsides also has a handy chart rating the bias of the most well-known news sources from across the political spectrum. I don’t always perfectly agree with the ratings these sites supply (and neither will you), but it is a good place to start and should be another tool in your information-analysis utility belt.

If you are confronted with a source you do not have any prior experience with, search for it using the above resources and also do a web search for the name of the website. There may be a Wikipedia page about it that will tell you where the site’s funding comes from and whether the site has been caught peddling false information in the past. A web search may also dig up stories by other news sources reporting on false information coming from that website. There is nothing news sources like better than calling out their rivals for shoddy reporting. Use that to your advantage.

If a web search for the site turns up nothing, that could be a warning signal of its own. On the internet, it is absurdly easy to throw up a website and fill it with canned content, interspersed with propaganda or conspiracy theories to draw internet clicks and advertising dollars. It is becoming increasingly common for politically motivated groups to create credible-looking news sites in order to push a specific ideological agenda, so look for sources with some history of credibility.

So, what about bias? Isn’t everything biased? Well, yes, which is why our unbiased and perfectly reliable source above is only hypothetical. The skill you must develop is in determining how far each source is from matching that hypothetical ideal, and then building a well-rounded collection of credible sources representing various points of view.

One thing that must be mentioned is that bias and credibility are not mutually exclusive. Although sources that are highly biased are also more likely to lack credibility, this is not necessarily a strict correlation. In determining the credibility of a source, bias is only one of the factors to consider.

Let’s take a look at two news sources on opposite sides of the political spectrum: Fox News and CNN.

Initially, you might be tempted to think these sources are the worst examples to use in a discussion of reliable sources because of their high level of bias, but I would like to argue the opposite. First, it is important to recognize the difference between news and opinion. Most large news organizations separate their news reporters from their opinion commentators. If a website does not make this difference very apparent to the consumer then that may not be a source you want to trust. Separating news from editorial content is a standard policy because bias is a well-known problem for most news organizations and separating these two areas is a safeguard against too much opinion bleeding into their news. Of course, this is not a perfect solution, but such a precaution is better than nothing, and smaller niche sites often do not have the resources or desire to make this distinction.

This does not mean that smaller niche sites cannot be valuable sources of information, especially if that information is of a sort in which the site specializes, but it is something to consider when evaluating the validity of information, especially about controversial topics.

Another reason to include several high profile news sites from both sides of the aisle in your list of sources is that any missteps by these organizations are less likely to escape notice than smaller niche news sites. You can bet CNN will be quick to pounce on any sort of shoddy reporting put out by Fox News and vice versa.

So, bias is not necessarily a bad thing. It is important that we have right-leaning news organizations to rigorously investigate left-leaning administrations, just as it’s important to have left-leaning news organizations to report on right-leaning administrations. That is the beautiful mess that is the American free press. Your best bulwark against bias is to have a diversity of credible sources at your disposal representing a wide range of viewpoints.

Remember that the best safeguard against our own biases is to seek out opposing opinions in order to constantly challenge our preconceptions and force ourselves to regularly reevaluate our conclusions. Nobody is right all the time, and most of us are wrong more often than we’d like to admit. Cognitive dissonance – that sense of discomfort we feel when encountering information which threatens to upend our carefully set up boundaries and views of the world – is not something to run from but to embrace. Finding out you are wrong is often the only way to discover what is right.

Eric W. Austin writes about local issues and technology. He can be reached at ericwaustin@gmail.com.

by Eric W. Austin

(The views of the author in the following column are not necessarily those of The Town Line newspaper, or its staff and board of directors.)

Where is everybody? That’s the question posed by Italian physicist and Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi in 1950 over a casual lunch with his fellow physicists at the famous Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico.

To understand Fermi’s question and why he’s asking it, we must first review a bit of background on Earth’s own rocky road to life.

The earth formed, scientists tell us, about 4.5 billion years ago, 9 billion years after the Big Bang. From a cosmological standpoint, the earth is a bit of a late-bloomer.

After forming, Earth was a hot ball of glowing, molten rock – much too hot for life – for nearly half a billion years, but eventually the surface cooled enough for the first oceans to form. Now the stage was set for life, but once conditions were favorable, how long did it take for life to develop on the new planet?

The answer, surprisingly, is not very long. According to some estimates, it may have been as few as a hundred million years after the earth cooled. That is, from the perspective of the Universe, hardly any time at all, just a geological blink of the cosmic eye.

Assuming this is true of life across the universe and not simply a cosmic fluke when it comes to Earth, we would expect star systems which formed much earlier than our own to have developed life billions of years before ours did.

Add to this the understanding that it has taken our species less than half a million years to go from tree-dwelling primates to radio-broadcasting prima donnas and it suggests that any civilization with as little as a million-year head start on us would have spread across half the galaxy before we had even crawled out of the trees.

So, where are all the aliens?

This question has perplexed scientists for more than half a century and is known as the Fermi Paradox.

“Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy,” says Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Institute for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). “Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire.”

He continues, “Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it’s quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.”

This creates a bit of a quandary for those seeking for intelligent life out beyond our solar system. On one hand, life appeared on Earth very early in its history – almost immediately, once conditions were right – so we would expect life to have appeared elsewhere in the universe as expeditiously as it did here on Earth. Since there are many stars much older than our sun, it only makes sense that life would pop up in many parts of the universe long before it did here on Earth.

On the other hand, it’s hard to get past the fact that we haven’t yet found any signs of life – not a smidge, smudge or random radio signal beamed out from Alpha Centauri. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

There must be something wrong with this picture.

Maybe, goes the thinking of some scientists, our assumption that life appeared very quickly here on Earth is wrong simply because the underlying assumption that life originated on Earth is wrong.

In other words, maybe life didn’t originate on Earth at all. Maybe it came from somewhere else. This idea is called the Panspermia Theory for the origin of life. The theory posits that life originated elsewhere in the universe and traveled here early in Earth’s history by way of an interstellar asteroid or meteor. Some scientists have even speculated that the impact resulting in the formation of our moon also brought with it the first microbes, seeding Earth with the life that would eventually evolve into you and me.

Where, though, did it come from? With a hundred billion stars in the observable universe, there’s a lot of places to choose from, but there is one very real possibility closer to home.

I’m speaking of Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a little older than the earth at about 4.6 billion years, and although both planets began as fiery balls of molten rock, because Mars is located further from the sun and is only half the size of the earth, it cooled much faster. Scientists believe the now-dead planet was once covered with water and had a very temperate climate sometime in the distant past. The famous “canals” of Mars were not made by little green men, but carved by liquid water flowing across its surface.

When the fires of Mars’ molten core began to die, more than 4 billion years ago, the planet lost its atmosphere and was eventually freeze-dried by the relentless solar winds. At that point, any life it had either died or retreated far beneath the planet’s surface.

What this all means is that conditions were right for life on Mars hundreds of millions of years before conditions were right for it here on Earth.

If we are willing to accept that life sprung up on Earth in a very short time (geologically-speaking), then couldn’t the same also be true of Mars? If that is correct, then life could have appeared on Mars while Earth was still a smoldering hellscape. And if we grant these two suppositions, it is a small leap to think that the life we see on Earth actually originated first on Mars and traveled here early in our history.

Are we all originally Martians? It’s an intriguing possibility, and it’s a question to which we may soon have an answer. NASA’s InSight lander touched down on Mars just last month. They recently released the first recordings of a Martian wind rippling across the dusty planet, and the space agency currently has plans for a manned mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s. Once soil samples are brought back for analysis, we may finally be able to determine whether our conjecture of past life on Mars is true. It might also tell us whether that past life bears any resemblance to the life we find on Earth.

So, the next time you’re looking up at the night sky, admiring the cosmic majesty allowed by Maine’s clear view of the stars, give a little wave. Someone, somewhere may be looking back at you and giving a little wave of their own. They might even be your distant relative.

Eric W. Austin writes about technology and community issues. He can be reached by email at ericwaustin@gmail.com.