Ah yes, the introduction of the start menu. A widget that even 20 years later, when Microsoft dared to change it even a bit, people absolutely lost their minds.
As someone who has dealt with chronic nerve disorders for the better part of a decade, I can tell you that numbness is preferable to raw chronic neuropathic pain.
Isn't it primarily for receiving signals rather than sending them? Of course if we ever do receive a convincing signal that appears to come from extraterrestrials, it is nearly unthinkable that no one would send anything back in that direction, so I see your point.