Michael Hann in the Guardian considers the Sonar electronic music festival in Barcelona marking its twenty-fifth anniversary by beaming music segments to a star some twelve light years distant. He then goes on to ruminate on humans taking music into space, from Gemini astronauts in the 60s playing a mouth organ to Chris Hadfield playing music in the International Space Station. And, of course, the famous golden discs on the two Voyager probes, now moving faster than any human-made objects in history, out of our solar system (in fact one has now passed the boundary which marks the edge of our solar system, and is the first human craft in interstellar space).

And his thoughts on this? He thinks it is mostly hubris that drove the science team to include these musical representations of human culture on these probes, on records that could, theoretically, last until long after the Earth itself is gone and the sun burned dim (unless it is found by intelligent aliens and played). Those discs could, in fact, one distant day be all that remains of human culture in the far, far future, preserved forever in the cold of deep space, with music and sounds and languages from around the globe and across the centuries.

That wasn’t hubris. It was something far, far better: it was hope, it was optimism, it was reaching out for a hoped-for better future for an expanded humanity and perhaps, just perhaps, a shared future with who knows what other new friends we might find out there. Who hopefully dig our music. An infinitesimally small chance of ever being found, a message in a bottle on a cosmic ocean; probably never be found or played or even if it is, understood. But it could be, it’s improbably, not impossible. No, not hubris: hope. And wonder. And joy. Far too easy to be cynical and critical, as this journalist has been, at such artistic and cultural reaching out beyond. We need to look with better eyes than that.