Mountain View, California (CNN) -- At this moment we have reached a major turning point for both science and the public at large. The SETI Institute is now offering the world the first taste of raw SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) data collected by the Allen Telescope Array in California. With this we move closer to fulfilling the institute's mission, which is to search for our beginnings and our place among the stars





Throughout the institute's 25-year history (we are a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to scientific research, education and public outreach), we have analyzed these raw data with custom algorithms operating on semi-custom hardware. Now we are transitioning to readily available hardware and servers because technology has caught up to us -- hooray!





In the future, we hope that a global army of open-source code developers, students and other experts in digital signal processing, as well as citizen scientists willing to lend their intelligence to our exploration, will have access to the same technology and join our quest.





As I look at my team at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, and at a handful of other SETI teams around the globe, I see very clever individuals who have been willing to forgo the traditional challenges and rewards of academic research to work on a program of immense potential -- to do work that can literally change the world. Many see SETI as a fascinating avocation, but few indeed are willing to make it their vocation.





Read more about Jill Tarter at TED.com





In 2009, when TED awarded me its TED prize and the opportunity to make a wish to change the world - -a wish they would help me fulfil l -- I thought of a mirror. It is the mirror that we hold up to the planet in our scientific search for the answer to the ancient question, 'Are we alone?' It is the mirror in which all humans can see themselves as the same, when compared to the extraterrestrial other. It's the mirror that allows us to alter our daily perspectives and see ourselves in a more cosmic setting. It is the mirror that reminds us of our common origins in stardust.





TED and technology are helping me and my team hold up that mirror to all inhabitants of this planet so that we can see our reflection as Earthlings. I told TED that "I wish that you would empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company."





Soon it will be time for you to get involved by participating at setiQuest.org, a website that will make available the results that we get from our telescopes. Right now the site is geared to those knowledgable about digital signal processing, but in the coming months, anyone -- from a child playing a setiQuest game to an interested adult -- can join the search for intelligent life in the cosmos.





It's been 50 years since Philip Morrison and Guiseppe Cocconi published their seminal scientific paper on SETI in the journal Nature, and since Frank Drake first used the Tatel telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia, to attempt to detect any radio signals from technologies he thought could be orbiting the nearby stars of Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. Since then, only those of us privileged enough to use the marvelous tools of the astronomer have been able to shape this pursuit of cosmic company.





For the past decade, you and any other person around the globe have been able to leave your computer turned on and search through data recorded at large radio telescopes with the SETI@home screen saver. But you couldn't change or improve the search your computer was enabling, you couldn't get involved creatively. You didn't have to see your reflection in the cosmic mirror.





Now that computing has gotten fast enough, now that Amazon Web Services, Dell, Intel, Google and others have donated resources to the SETI Institute, my team and I can benefit from your skills and your energy. You can help us with our search.





Access the raw data we have published at setiQuest and show us how to process it in new ways, find signals that our current signal detection algorithms are missing.





This summer, when we openly publish
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