Chapter 5, Is There Intelligent Life on Earth?, Chapter 6, The Triumph of Voyager Summary and Analysis

Sagan opens asking the reader to suppose that she is an alien happening upon the earth in a spaceship for the first time and to consider the observations of her sensors. He uses this supposition to illustrate various meteorological features of the Earth. The illustration is used to show that one could learn an enormous amount about the earth before realizing that there is an intelligent life there. Life would be obvious, but not intelligence.

Only if the alien examined radio waves in some detail would she notice or if she zoomed in on the earth to the 100-meter range. Even at this distance one would know very little about human life. Even at low resolutions, the meter range...