First Contact -- how to do it

[Darth Wedgius]

Assuming you're an interstellar civilization X, and you want to contact non-interstellar civilization Y. If you want to get specific, assume X has ST:TNG-type technology and Y is us. Assume X has friendly intentions, and that both X and Y are capable of logic as we see it, but are not perfectly logical.

How would you do it?

One possibility is to give vague hints and see how Y reacts. Blurred streaks in the sky. Unexplained phenomena. What we see now once in a while, but I'm sure that's coincidence. You can only go so far by seeing how the experts of Y talk about these things, because mass reaction may not follow their experts. And their fiction only goes so far -- both the authors and consumers know it's just a story.

Another possibility -- land on their equivalent of the White House lawn? Assuming you know their language decently. That you make your intentions clear. That either no guard with a twitchy finger shoots your envoy, etc. Smiles and handshakes all around.

What happens to the stock market? Technology companies may find their work obsolete, but they are also best positioned to take advantage of alien science and technology. The market doesn't like uncertainty. And that's not just fat cats' money, that's retirement funds and money banks and business uses for, in part, jobs. "Aliens come in peace!" might be followed by "Breadlines Open Up."

National defense... If the aliens landed on the Y-equivalent of the White House lawn, would people in Y-Moscow celebrate? Medicine... If the aliens can cure everything, Ys live longer. If they can really cure *everything*, we may live much longer. Population will go up. If Y is handed cheap fusion power on a plate, that helps the impact of that population, but that's not true for every resource.

How do you as X first contact Y?

[technobabbler]

1. give Earthlings space, keep my ship parked around Mars. Call ahead and ask if it's cool to park on the front lawn.
2. be transparent. every meeting is open to every world leader who wants to show up.
3. bribe the Earthlings by sending a boxes of Space Kit Kats and the cure to a specific rare disease, say leukemia. save the good stuff for later.
4. invite people to your ship for tours of your ship. resist the urge to turn them into Hamburgers.
5. leave if people get hostile or things get messed up for whatever reason. maybe return in 10 years.

[TGLS]

How would I?

Well, I wouldn't land on the White House lawn. If I need to land, I'd pick somewhere neutral. UN is the typical answer. Maybe Switzerland. Perhaps Terra Nullus somewhere. Maybe the international space station.

But I wouldn't go to them. I'd make them come to me. I'd put something really conspicuous out on the moon or something like that. Have it repeat a message like the Arecibo signal. Make contact when they send a probe or astronauts there.

Everything after that is Uplift's department. Right thinking regimes that do as I say get medicine and consumer goods. Wrong thinking regimes don't. Collapsed regimes are protected by peacekeepers and reformed into cooperative regimes. Press governments on the planet to accept a steady push towards my ideals. Collect bright students and send them to off-world universities and crush out their wrong ideas. Eventually, our ideas are common sense, rebellion is foolish, all benefit under Federation rule...

[Fixer]

Then, once all thought opposing the regime is suppressed BAM! Send the population off to the crystal spider mines of Proxima Six.

[phantom000]

I have always liked the idea of First Contact as a long complex process that would last for generations. Slowly introducing a civilization to the idea of extra-terrestrial intelligence while also gauging their reaction to the idea. It could be that a lot of UFO sightings are deliberate experiments to see how we will react, as individuals, as a society but also as a species.

So how do you gauge our reaction? There are probably hundreds of ways to do it, given how much we like to communicate. I have this picture of alien scholars dissecting our popular culture and debating the significance of movies like Aliens or Star Wars against stuff like E.T. or Starman. Then another alien arguing that books are a better indicator, like Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama or Carl Sagan's Contact. Then younger one stands up and says that they should focus on games like Mass Effect.