We're not exactly radio-silent
Commercial radio broadcasting started in, what, the 1920s or so? Now, perhaps AM waves aren't as likely to leave the Earth's atmosphere (if I remember correctly, anyway), but FM started around the 1940s, I think. TV was first messed around with in the 1930s - apparently, the first TV broadcast strong enough to stray from Earth would have been Hitler's opening of the 1936 Olympics!
We've been broadcasting our presence in a general way for, what, 80-100 years almost? So those signals are about 80 light years out from Earth now, in a big bubble that just gets noisier and noisier the closer to us you get. According to JPL's PlanetQuest site, there seems to be quite a lot of planets within that range.
Also, I seem to remember that back in the 1980s or so - when SETI was still a US government thing - that directed signals WERE sent to some star or another or two. Of course, those messages wouldn't have been anything like modern Internet crap, but hey.
Never mind the internet - we're already being judged on old 1950s and 60s sitcoms, and whatever movies they showed back then - I remember growing up on schlock B horror movies (Sir Graves Ghastly and the Creature Feature on Saturday afternoons) and, uh, Abbott and Costello, Blondie, Francis, and Laurel and Hardy movies (Sunday mornings, rotated). Oh, and the Three Stooges.
I'm a participant of SETI@Home. No word of a reply to any of this yet, but .. it'll be interesting should one come, I'm sure.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
