Still, I'd rather be represented by its naive utopianism than by most of the signals shooting off this planet.

No doubt the golden record will bemuse any alien life that actually bothers to examine the goo on a piece of space junk. But a bemused alien may in fact be the one who comes closest to guessing the true meaning of the golden record, and perhaps the true meaning of human life itself. And so it seems fitting that our one letter to the universe reads something like this: Wish you were here. We have no idea what we're doing, but we sound good!

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who thinks that perhaps the golden record is really a message to ourselves.