Yeah and you didn't answer some very basic premises, which are gonna arise the second you mention transhumanism. What happens when the romulans, get a hold of this tech, and can multiple their armies at a near exponential rate. Your gonna be facing an army of infinity, you can say this would make a good show the reality is it would make a show unbelievable.
Easily solved in dialogue. "wait, so we can make duplicates of people?" "Nope, doesn't work like that. This tech can't do that." The writers can literally put a kibosh on it in a few seconds flat.
I wasn't trying to create a detailed synopsis of the show, but I don't really see too many problems with exploring what I clearly stated was a pre-singularity like state in human affairs with transhumanist overtones though not necessarily permeating the culture yet. It takes the impossible nature of speculating on what would happens afterwords out of the equation. I did mention that the UFP was a technological leader in this area, they are the first amongst the powers that would start embracing the tech, other powers of course would be racing to catch up, in the meantime the UFP would be seen as a greater potential threat, and the irony is that the UFP itself doesn't know where this change will lead. Another element that could be explored is if transhumanism might lead to higher enlightenment through a change of perception brought forth with the technology...is the changeover just assumed to be threatening by the Romulans for example, or if they embrace it will they the better for it as well, and abandon hostility towards the UFP? We really wouldn't know the outcome right away. I could see a series where the UFP might be hard to surpass for the first few years, then suddenly a few Alpha Quadrant powers challenge the supremacy. There would probably have to be a few concessions made in the technology (showing how powerful the potential is) such as Starfleet officers allowed only one identity and only one copy at a time, but all crew members could upload and download themselves.
Except that don't work, you can't just make up dialogue and pretend it's believable, unless your audience is totally uneducated, these plot holes will crop up just about every single episode. Granted that seemed to never matter on voyageur If your making a show into 2015 etc, your gonna have to be a little more advanced when people were 50 years ago. People expect a certain amount of plot coherence, this is the internet age, where everyone has access to information.
If you establish the milieu right off the bat then the show doesn't have to contradict itself. All the implications of the technology will be intertwined in the fabric of the show itself.
I've been watching this kind of thing for nearly half a century. There's nothing new under the sun. And the Singularity most certainly is apocalyptic, in the sense of being climactic, grandiose and supposedly prophetic. "Everything will change real soon now" is a notion nearly as old as Western civilization, and is very much a part of it. People who are awaiting the abolition of death or planning to download their minds into machines would do well see to their life insurance and set aside money for their funerals - their fate will be as everyone else's always has been.
I think part of the point here is that this IS new...the exponential growth is impacting the world on a real level, one even us slow-poke humans can see in real-time for the first time. Its taken a long time to get here, but now we are living in it, and people are having a hard time grasping it. It's tough being saddled with a linear view! Think of it as info technology (the very same one that has created and stored more info since WWII than all of human history) finally reaching a critical mass so to speak. Whatever the ultimate conclusion is...I guarantee you we are underestimating it right now (even me). RAMA