If other civilizations do exist, one key in becoming aware of them is whether we are intelligent enough to adequately interpret their signals or to identify a piece of their technology if it should appear in our solar system.
I would without hesitation say NO. We are not intelligent enough to recognize intelligent life. Not from 'out there, we aren't smart enough to recognize intelligent life 'right here'.
Whales, dolphins, the great ape's, elephants and other-- all have their own societies, families, societal standards and norms... They have a language - communicate with each other and the group and other - as well as humans do. they experience joy, anger and grief, they play and they fight, they defend, discipline, and educate/teach their offspring And yet, we consider them less than. We will acknowledge they are mammal's... but on the scale of whose who in intelligence... well, they are animals and we are human. It's a sad thing to me - for them - that what we consider lower than, animal, even soul less (they ain't getting into heaven. They're animals. Ain't no animals in heaven. They don't have souls.) are actually quite a bit more intelligent then humans.
The TRUTH is -- human's are dumber than dog s*it... and choose very adamantly to stay that way. What we consider 'less than' is actually 'alien' to us. Even expert's and individual's who work and care for these beautiful Being's (with a few exceptions), attempt to train them to be more human. To prove to the world how 'smart' they are. Speech, art, dress, manner's, roll over, jump high, and on and on. Human's make absolutely NO attempt to communicate with any other Being but another Human Being. And don't even get me started on dogs, cats, birds, horses, cows, etc.
All these Beings try to send signals to us all the time. Stop. Quit hurting me. Your killing my babies. The body language alone should give us some clue to that. It is not that the signals aren't being sent...we're just to actively dumbed down to receive them, much less understand them. If we went down that road - we would have to consider that we are not unique. Not king of all we see. Not anymore valued or important in the scheme of Creation then any other Living Being.
NO. We are absolutely not intelligent enough to recognize intelligence in an alien being. If it's not us, we don't get it. And we will do our best to imprison it, enslave it, or kill it.
