Beyond an Anthropomorphic Template

In our endeavours to explore all possible forms that non-terrestrial communication may encompass, eventually we must throw off our anthropomorphic bias and investigate the implications of post-biological intelligence on SETI search strategies. In the event a candidate signal is detected, our initial categorization and assessment will focus on analyzing its comprising constructs, to ascertain whether information content is present; a fundamental signature of intelligence. To ensure our systems are capable of encompassing such intelligent communicators, we need to investigate both the contrasts and similarities of such non-biological communication and how this extends the known spectrum. In this paper, we begin to investigate the likely signatures and contrasting structures such non-biological communicators may present to us, across a range of known machine communication phenomena, and discuss how such contrasting forms of information exchange can aid, extend and refine our detection and decipherment capabilities.