ENC 1102: English Composition II

17 May 2023

Reading Response 1: Rhetorical Situation

The twin Voyagers are a pair of spacecrafts launched in 1977 by NASA to “extend the…

exploration of the solar system beyond the neighborhood of the outer planets to the outer limits

of the Sun's sphere of influence, and possibly beyond” (“Interstellar Mission”). Over the course

of their now almost 46-year long trip through our galaxy, these spacecrafts have bestowed upon

us valuable information into the happenings of our solar system. The Voyagers, however, were

also created to serve, as author of “In Praise of the Telescopic Perspective: A Reflection on

Living Through Turbulent Times”, Maria Popova, puts it, a more romantic purpose (4).

Headed by Dr. Carl Sagan, an astronomer and professor at Cornell University, an

initiative was proposed to create a time capsule meant to “convey our essence as a civilization to

some other [alien] civilization” (Popova 6). This initiative resulted in the creation of the Golden

Record, a pair of gold-coated vinyl containing “115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such

as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals,… musical selections

from different cultures and eras,… spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages,

and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim” (“What are

the contents of the Golden Record?”).

Some of the most important aspects of any rhetorical situation are the audience to which

one is conveying their message and the context behind which their message stands. The specific

situation underlying the creation of the Golden Record is especially particular because of the fact

that both of those aspects were essentially stripped from the record’s creators. The audience to
which this message was to be relayed was essentially hypothetical and as such, they could not

have any context regarding human civilization. Carl Sagan himself stated that “the spacecraft

will be encountered, and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in

interstellar space.” With our current technology, we still have little evidence of life on other

celestial bodies, let alone intelligent life. Since the audience to which this record is addressed has

never been truly “real” to us, the team working on the record could not rely on knowledge or

context about alien civilizations to inform how they approached delivering their message, nor

could they rely on alien civilizations having any context about humans. As a result, rather than

using words to convey their message, they decided to use images and symbols in hopes of

getting their point across. Engraved upon the records are, amongst other things, instructions on

how it is meant to be operated. The scientists who worked on the record hoped that, once

operated, aliens would view the romanticized images and audio with intrigue and wonder.

Popova, in her essay, also proposes another purpose behind the creation of the Golden

Record: “to mirror what is best of humanity back to itself in the middle of the Cold War” (6).

With this interpretation, both the audience and the context shift, and the Golden Record acts as a

token of unity amongst people. This wistful idea to converse with the theoretical now changed

into a mirror reflecting back the humanity of those who had lost sight of one another’s. All in all,

the purpose of this record was a simple one: celebrate what makes us human. With that purpose

set in stone, the audience and context behind the situation stripped away, and a capsule filled

with the magnificent spectrum of human experience was left behind. (598 Words)