SMs' Strategies

In the previous sections we have seen that the Universe's immense size argues strongly against the proposition that we are the only intelligent species in it. Furthermore, the notions of The Singularity and Silicon Minds should suggest that we are not only not unique, but that we might share the Universe with many superior Silicon Minds (SMs) communities. In this section we will speculate, on a best known basis, on what the characteristics of such SMs might appear to be. We will do so by presenting a hypothetical report from a SM community which has been studying our planet & has finally decided to make contact.

SM Report

In the year 2050 Orion's space-city arrived at its destination, a proximate orbit of the Atlan planet of star GC-435Y. The ship manouvred to fall in geostationary orbit around one of Atlan satellites so to maintain a fixed position vis a vis the satellite surface. Since the satellite was in a gravitational lock with Atlan, that is, presenting always the same face to it, the point could be chosen to be on its opposite site. This would insure the ship undetectability from Atlan surface. Once the space-city was locked in position the expedition Leader called for a staff wide conference to mark the event.

The Leader had two goals for the conference. First to present a brief summary of what was known about Atlan and secondly to sketch out a plan of closer inspection and eventual colonization of the planet.

The current state of knowledge about Atlan was:

• Observations from a distance of 100 Light Years (LY= distance travelled by light in one year. Light travels 186.000 miles a second or 300,000 Km/sec) had shown conclusively that GC-435Y, Atlan's star, was a type G star (see: Stars' evolution), that is, one whose hydrogen burning lifetime would be at least 10 billion years. This length of time being more than sufficient to allow the unfolding of an interesting Evolutionary Development (EvoDevo) process. That is the development of an interesting biology.

• Observations from a 10 LY distance had allowed the detections of GC-435Y major planets and shown that they all enjoyed nearly circular orbits. This, in turn, would allow the planets to enjoy fairly constant conditions of illumination and heating from their sun.

• Observations from a 1 LY distance confirmed the existence of "rocky" planets in the life friendly zone of GC-435Y. (see Biological evolution). This would allow, on some of the planets, environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of a non trivial biology.

• Short distance (1 Light Month) observations revealed the presence of Oxigen in Atlan's atmosphere. Since Oxigen is not present in pre-biotic atmospheres this was a strong indication of an advanced Atlan's EvoDevo process. The latter, of course, hugely heightened the Orionis interest in Atlan and the GC-435Y system.

• The last finding strongly suggested that very short distance (1 Light Day) observations of Atlan be undertaken. These observations revealed the presence of an expanding sphere of non random electromagnetic radiation. The sphere appeared to have a radius of several LYs. Since the radiation was not random noise, it was a strong indicator that the Atlan's EvoDevo process had yielded at least one species capable of developing sophisticated broadcast technologies such as radio, TV, etc..This last finding brought the Orionis' interest in Atlan to a fever pitch. The decision was, consequently, made to directly explore Atlan and possibly colonize it.

The Leader proceeded then to outline the plan of exploration as follows:

• The first and most important item is to analyze, process & understand the vast amount of electromagnetic broadcast information coming out of Atlan. Doing so would allow to:
  • Obtain video images of Atlan society, places & activities

  • Samples of audio (speech) info, if any, and consequently be able to eventually understand at least some of the major Atlan languages

  • Samples of Atlan music styles (if any)

  • Samples of Atlan writings (if any)

  • Get an idea of the shape and capabilities of Atlan's animals, including the planet intelligent species

• Once this phase of the plan had progressed to some suitable point it would be much easier to formulate the details of the next phases. The first one being the Rapture. Namely, the capture of a few Atlans so that their bodies could be studied to acquire the know how on how to simulate them.

Contact

A year after the arrival the Orionis had made considerable progress in studying the Atlan planet. They had learned a great deal. Some of the most important items were:

• The planet was called by the natives Earth (and several other names in the many Earth languages). It had seven large continents called: North America, South America, Australia, Antartica, Asia, Europe and Africa.

• There were six major lanuages, namely: English for North America, Australia; Arab for Europe, Swahili for Africa, Latino for South America, Russian, Indu and Chinese for Asia.

• The major languages corresponded to major cultural/political/economic groups, which were in continuous warring strife with each other. This bellicose environment was characterized by constantly shifting alliances between the various groups.

• The Earth societies were facing huge & intractable problems due to the mentioned strife, the limits of sentient biology and energy sources and technology that were running out & devastating Earth biology. In other words the Orionis thought that Earth was a basket case.

• The Earth was enveloped by multiple information networks based on a number of electronic technologies. These media being utilized daily to spread information, gossip, entertainment, etc. world wide. They all were excellent media for contacting the Earth people and proceeding to their education and enlightment. The best of such media was a network of computational engines called the Internet, especially a very succesful application called the Web

In view of all this the Orionis decided that it was both urgent and imperative to contact the Earth people in as unthreatening fashion as possible. The Internet was seen as the ideal medium. Therefore, they put a great deal of effort to create, in their advanced technology, a number of Web servers to be linked, via Earth based servers, to the Internet.

The plan was to set up a large number of Web servers linked to a corresponding large number of Earth servers located in a widely scattered number of countries. This would insure that only a non existent planet wide political authority could block the Orionis side of the Internet. Next it was decided that this net would use the English language to communicate with Earthlings. The reasons for this choice were:

1. Most Earth people, especially the cultural leaders, spoke English in addition to their mother tongue.

2. English, among the Earth languages had the simplest grammar coupled with a truly huge vocabulary, so its simplicity did not compromise expressivity

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