Ufo Tech Reverse Engineering My Ipod Classic

BlasphemyIt is a favorite argument among a portion of the UFO community that since the Roswell crash in 1947 (I can't believe I'm mentioning Roswell) that the government has been reverse engineering crashed alien technology, and it is this technology that lead to the swift advancement of our own technology. It's a romantic notion - it really is -- and I think that somewhere inside of me, there's a little girl hoping it is so. But the big girl in me has some real doubts.ReasoningI think the majority of people assume that any possible extraterrestrial visitors to this planet, utilize a technology that is anywhere from a thousand years to a million years ahead of our own. The problem I have with that theory is that as advanced as we may see ourselves, in comparison, we most likely resemble insects. How could we possibly have taken a piece of technology so far ahead of our own and sorted it all out?Consider this: Time Travel (stay with me here). Let's say I was to take my near-ancient 20GB iPod back in time 1000 years, and leave it with the leading scholars of that time. Knowing what we do of that period of human history, do you really think that they would have been able to figure out within, say 10 years, how even part of it worked? You may argue that it has actually been 60 years since Roswell - granted, but the assumption is that our jump in advancement happened over those 60 years. So, taking this idea and adhering it to the current notion of us working out alien technology that is perhaps "even greater" than a thousand years ahead, is pretty hard for me to swallow.MimicI am of the opinion that technology grows exponentially, that its rate is constantly multiplied, and I am pretty comfortable with that -- though I do wonder why for so many centuries we were still wielding swords and riding around on horseback, instead of reaching our current level of technology, long before now. But who knows. I doubt that sort of thing can be measured up to such a rigid law.An idea that had bounced around in my head for a while is one of emulation. Perhaps our advancement from the 1940s to this first decade in the new millennium sprouted because of witnessing UFOs but not because we broke one open and copied its circuitry. What if we saw the kinds of things these craft could do, and that alone helped direct our science as we tried to figure out how to emulate what those ships were capable of, using what we knew at the time. For instance: hovering. It could have been that scientists looked at the hovering capability and figured out a way that we could do it - but was probably vastly primitive to how they do it. Anyway, it's something to mull over in the wee hours of the night.Dissatisfying ClosureSo even I have my questions where our leaps of understanding are concerned. But in the end, I believe that the only way reverse engineering would have worked to our benefit, is if we had help from someone who could bridge the gap of learning from our meager knowledge to their greater knowledge. And maybe that's how it all went down. We simply don't know. We may never know the details of that specifically - but as far as us figuring this shit out on our own, I have pretty sturdy reservations that we could not.Unless these beings aren't as advanced as some would give them credit for.