Technology's Stories: Notes From the Field: Roswell, New Mexico (original) (raw)

Inside the Colorado UFO Project by G. David Thayer

2009

A great deal has been both spoken and written about the University of Colorado UFO study, some of which makes sense, some of which does not. The typical person remains confused. Was the Project a valid scientific effort or a gigantic hoax? Did those involved really try to solve the problem, or did they merely go through the motions? Who was right in the controversy between Dr. Condon on the one hand and Saunders and Levine on the other? In real life the answers to such questions are never simple, nor are they here. Nevertheless, in the hope that I may succeed in better defining the issues, I hereby offer my own experience in and opinions about the UFO Project.

« The Ghost in the Machine. How Sociology Tried to Explain (Away) American Flying Saucers and European Ghost Rockets, 1946-1947 », in Alexander Geppert (ed.), Imagining Outer Space, European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century, New York, Macmillan, 2018, p. 224-244.

For decades, social scientists have explained the emergence of flying saucers in 1947 as a by-product of the cold war context. They claimed that people were influenced by cold war and "saw" Russian flying disks while the rest of the population, scared by the context, believed in the reality of these saucers. In this paper, I show that the explanation in terms of cold war influence does not explain the situation. For several reason. First because people in 1947 were not afraid of saucers, they spent their time making jokes about them. Only 1% of the people interrogated for a Gallup poll on the subjects mentioned the Russians as an explanation. This fact can be clearly understood when we compare the flying disks wave of 1947 and the ghost rockets wave on 1946 in Europe. We see that the reactions to the two events were very different. While Europeans took very seriously the existence of ghost rockets on 1946, the American public didn't take seriously the disks in 1947. We may therefore think that the cold war explanation works for the ghost rockets and not for the disks, but the situation is a little more complex. This cold war explanation should be discussed for a second reason: sociology and social history cannot use explanation in terms of influence because social actors are not sponges that absorb the context: they define it, they discuss it, they chose among the elements from that context that they will take seriously and that they will reject. Social studies of subjects like UFOs as a lot to learn from the tools developed by social students of science. [note: this paper is a corrected version of a paper previously published in 2012 in the firs hardcover edition of the book in which it is included.]

How Modern is Technology? The Link between Prehistoric UFOs and Modern Traditionalism

Religio, 2022

In the twentieth century, certain European elitist circles embraced Traditionalist thought, most notably promoted by its pioneer René Guénon (1886-1951). Ever since, a lose movement of like-minded people has handed down religiously-influenced theories opposing the modern world. Modern Traditionalists and modernity are thus fierce enemies. Any progress, modernization, or technological advances are to Traditionalists what regression, stagnation, and reactionary forces are to the avant-garde. So, what could be a possible link between Traditionalism and modern technology? Perhaps, the fundamental doubt of technology's belonging to the modern world. From the 1960s onwards, a self-proclaimed radical Traditionalist, who was further cherished as a New Age prophet, advocated ancient technology. True to the motto 'opposites attract,' the English writer John Michell (1933-2009) had reconciled many antagonisms. By linking astro-archaeology and various speculative earth mystery theories, Michell aimed to fuse prehistoric megalithic science and flying saucers. To Michell, the rejection of modernity and its by-products did not contradict the belief in extra-terrestrial means of prehistoric technology. The aim of this paper is the exposition of Michell's approach towards flying saucers as a technological means of prehistory from a modern Traditionalist and alternative archaeologist perspective.

UFOs and Intelligence: A Timeline. By George M. Eberhart

October 10, 2023 update. After an effort of many years, I have prepared a comprehensive timeline of UFO history that will be useful to UFO researchers and historians. “UFOs and Intelligence” is an up-to-date retrospective of UFO history (from Agobard of Lyons to the newly appointed US investigation agency UAPTF), intertwined with events in US and world history concerning military and civilian intelligence agencies and the cult of secrecy. It is now 679 pages and more than 555,000 words (including a substantial “Sources and Further Reading” appendix). Readers will discover or rediscover many events, people, and UFO cases they may not be familiar with. Some will find it useful for current or planned research projects. Military cases, those involving commercial aircraft, close encounters involving physical traces and other evidence, reports involving occupants or entities, and events surrounding military and sensitive nuclear sites are emphasized, but this timeline covers the full spectrum of UFO history, from contactee experiences to misidentifications of mundane phenomena and notorious hoaxes. Links to online sources are given, and links to biographical information are provided when available. A timeline like this allows us to view events from a different perspective, letting us make connections we might not otherwise see. It forces us to view the big picture, amid the grand flow of UFO cases, military security decisions, a vast swathe of personalities, and world history.

Historical Perspectives: How the Search for Technosignatures Grew Out of the Cold War

Technosignatures for Detecting Intelligent Life in Our Universe

This chapter focuses on the history of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It will explore the following questions: Why did SETI transition from a fringe idea to a concerted scientific effort in the 1960s? What were the different cultural, ideological, and technical approaches in the search? Why did SETI develop primarily in the US and Soviet Union as opposed to other countries? What challenges did early SETI pioneers face? In investigating these questions, I will focus especially on the collaborative efforts between US astronomer Carl Sagan and Soviet astrophysicist I.S Shklovsky as my main case study. This chapter aims to contextualize the current effort to search for technosignatures within its historical roots, with hopes this context will prompt a mindful analysis of how we utilize the artefacts from history in the ongoing search.

Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop

Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop , 1999

Foreword: History is often concerned with heritage and origins. The question applies as much to UFOs as any other subject. For example, where in time do genuine UFOs begin? Was 1947 the beginning or a turning point in UFO history, as opposed to human perceptions of the phenomenon? We all know that anomalous aerial phenomena have always been with us, as the portents and prodigies of primeval and medieval times, the Fortean anomalies of the scientific age, the phantom airships, ghost fliers, foo fighters and ghost rockets that predate Kenneth Arnold. But is there a genuine continuity in the phenomenon? Folklorist, Thomas Bullard affirms, “UFOs as the experiential phenomenon and UFOs as the popular cultural myth entangle in a knot of confusion. I suspect that this entanglement stands as one of the greatest impediments to understanding the nature of UFOs, and scientific acceptance of UFOs as a subject worthy of serious attention. A historical perspective offers a grip on the end of the string, a chance to untangle the mess to some degree.” Behind this perplexing UFO history is a whole history, or mythology of modern science, less well known, stretching back to the sixteenth century. What Karl Guthke terms “a heritage of Copernicanism; the modern myth, or the myth, of the modern era, [without which] the image of man since the Copernican revolution would be decidedly poorer.” The fact is, the question of extraterrestrial life, rather than having arisen in the twentieth century, has been accepted by the majority of educated persons since, at least, the Scientific Revolution, and in many instances was employed to formulate philosophical and religious positions in relation to it. As William Whewell observed, in his 1853 treatise, Of A Plurality of Worlds: An Essay, popular ideas about a multiplicity of inhabited worlds “are generally diffused in our time and country, are common to all classes of readers, and as we may venture to express it, are popular views of persons of any degree of intellectual culture, who have, directly or derivatively, accepted the doctrines of modern science.” So as Professor Michael Crowe put it, “even if no UFOs hover in the heavens, belief in extraterrestrial beings has hovered in human consciousness for dozens of decades.” UFOs, and, the experiential aspects of UFO history are, seemingly, inextricably entangled in the myth of the modern era. This then, is simply an attempt to grab hold of the end of the string.