Even if we do encounter extraterrestrials with writing, they are likely to be so far away that communication will be all but impossible. The universe is large in comparison to the speed of light.
On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Benjamin M Scarborough < benjamin.scarboro...@utdallas.edu> wrote: > On 20 Aug 2011, at 00:35, Jukka K. Korpela wrote: > >And now we think that a little over a million is enough for everyone, > >just as they thought in the late 1980s that 16 bits is enough for > everyone. > > Whenever somebody talks about needing 31 bits for Unicode, I always think > of the hypothetical situation of discovering some extraterrestrial > civilization and trying to add all of their writing systems to Unicode. I > imagine there would be little to unify outside of U+002E FULL STOP. > > The point I'm getting at is that somebody always claims that > U+0000..U+10FFFF isn't enough, but I never see convincing evidence or > rationale that an expansion is necessary—just speculation. > > —Ben Scarborough > > >
