"Forty years ago we wrote the script of the internet. Thirty years ago we turned it on. We thought we were building a system to connect computers together. But we quickly learned that it's a system for connecting people.

    "What's important about what these people are doing: They're beginning to learn how to communicate with species that are not us, but share a sensory environment. [They're figuring out] what it means to communicate with something that's not a person. I can't wait to see these experiments unfold.

    "These interactions with other animals will teach us, ultimately, how we might interact with an alien from another world. I can hardly wait."