According to Baum, even if an extraterrestrial civilization were to communicate using electromagnetic signals alone, it could send humanity information with which humans themselves could create lethal biological weapons.
There is also a lack of up-to-date international research on the humanities scholars' information needs that takes into account recent rapid increases in the availability of ICT infrastructure, especially the Internet.
In addition, the cultural and religious values of extraterrestrial species would likely be shared over centuries if contact is to occur by radio, meaning that rather than causing a huge shock to humanity, such information would be viewed much as archaeologists and historians view ancient artifacts and texts.
Search, Google's crown jewel, and humanity's way of finding the world's information, has big problems.
For the rest of humanity, however, the information will by now seem as stale as a day-old pizza.
Cloud Station 13 is described as a place set up to protect the vast amounts of information humanity now hoards on its devices – the majority of which comprises selfies, pictures of kittens and a lot of porn.
It is intended to advance humanity's "spiritual information".
It's the fastest way known to humanity to send information".
And while it's great to have access to an index of the largest compilation of information humanity has ever seen at my literal fingertips, I'm going to continue to ask people things like, "What's the best place to get pizza in San Francisco?" or "How do you complete this function on Excel?," even if it is on forums like Quora.
Also on their list were American history, humanities and the arts, information technology and communications.
