Only a few months ago, the Allen Telescope was activated as a dedicated SETI instrument. More recently, the Arecibo Radio Telescope located in Puerto Rico was upgraded with new receivers capable of capturing 500 times more data with greater frequency granularity than ever before. The SETI@home project is actively seeking additional volunteers to donate CPU cycles via BOINC to help process the data, despite already being the largest distributed computer with an estimated 370,000 live computers connected continuously.

The SETI quest has been underway for decades, but only tapped into the collective processing power of distributed computing in the past eight years. No signals have been discovered yet, however, prompting many to question both SETI's future and approach. Proposed improvement ideas have ranged from looking for probes instead of civilizations to being more active about broadcasting in case others are looking.

In the case of advertising Earth's presence, what nation should be allowed and what message would be transmitted? Is there danger to advertising Earth to more advanced civilizations (i.e., galactic enslavement, annihilation, etc.)?