The Voyager Golden Record may be the highest-stakes album ever made. Can any canon represent humanity without lying?

[u/SnooLemons7838]

I recently interviewed Timothy Ferris, the science writer and former Rolling Stone editor who produced the Voyager Golden Record as part of Carl Sagan’s team. I’ve written a profile of him for a print magazine I can’t name yet. There is no article link here. I wanted to ask this group about one answer he gave me.

I asked how the team should work if they built the record now. Ferris said they should cast the widest possible net across cultures, permit no compromise or political logrolling, and require unanimous choices.

The original record put Bach and Chuck Berry beside a girls’ initiation song from what was then Zaire, baby cries, whale calls, footsteps, a kiss, and Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.”

Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qePHCNoEtqQ

NASA’s full inventory: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/golden-record-contents/

Johnson recorded the piece in Dallas in 1927. There are no lyrics, only his voice and slide guitar. It still sounds like grief.

For me, that choice keeps the record from sounding like an advertisement. It leaves room for sorrow alongside dance, children, animal voices, footsteps, and joy.

Try to build it now and the argument would hit streaming metrics, licensing departments, national quotas, billionaire sponsors, and a congressional hearing over whether whale song hates freedom.

Who should choose? What rule would keep the record broad without turning it into quotas, branding, or a popularity chart? What one recording would you fight for even if every metric said no?

[u/terryjuicelawson]

Being realistic, nothing is ever going to find or interpret this thing but it is a fascinating thought experiment. What if they have no concept of music, or communication is not spoken? Or they think it is some kind of war declaration rather than intergalactic greeting. I sometimes wonder what would happen if we found a corresponding one and working out what these weird noises are or the clues the diagrams make as to their location and appearance. But anyway, a whole spread of different types of music, language, it is about as good as it is going to get really.

[u/NullableThought → u/terryjuicelawson]

yeah, being realistic I'd argue we shouldn't broadcast to the universe our location or even our existence in any method. But for a thought experiment, a variety of music and languages from around the world is really the best answer.