Talking to the Neighbors
Senior SETI scientist Seth Shostak says (nice lede!) that he expects we'll have located and perhaps sent a signal to an alien civilization within a single generation. Shostak's reasoning adds the discovery of many extrasolar planets in recent years to the Drake Equation, stirs in Moore's Law, and bakes thoroughly. This argument sounds reasonable, although as always people will disagree about the Drake Equation's unknowns.