How do you think The Culture contacting Earth would happen in practise?
I was just idly wondering what would happen, particularly in the first stages. What do you think? Would they allow themselves to be seen in orbit for a few days before making contact? Perhaps a worldwide greeting on all media channels? Countless ship avatars popping up, knocking on doors to personally introduce themselves to us?
We've seen that The Culture respects (or pretends to respect) the governmental systems of other civilisations, establishing embassies, making treaties etc so I guess the most probable, and most boring, scenario is that they'd contact governments or the UN first, maybe with a bit of foreshadowing such as revealing their existence in a way that only small groups of scientists could detect. How would that work? Land a ship near a military base and wait the humans to come? Start off with a message from off planet? Send a delegation in person to the UN HQ?
Edit: I used the wrong practise/practice in the title. Wish I didn’t feel the need to mention it but I do.