Why? I mean, why don't we have more different levels of development in Earth? Where are our Viking societies, our Wakandas? Why is every country that starts to develop almost immediately very close behind the currently most advanced country they do trade with?
This is a situation where the logic doesn't work, since all humans evolved from a common ancestor (minus some archaic DNA here and there) about 100,000 years ago. For a Trek like scenario, we'd need to have like tool-using crows, elephants, octopus, and dolphins all sharing the earth, who somehow had their own industrial revolutions within no more than a thousand years of one another.
Deep time is really, really deep, man. There were probably inhabitable planets in the galaxy which existed long before the sun even formed. Having races that exist for millions/billions of years seems implausible to us, because we're so new. But we're arguing from a sample size of one.
Also, there are plenty of uncontacted tribes left (Andamanese, Papuan highlanders, some groups in the Amazon) who still either live as hunter-gatherers or neolithic levels, as we're enforcing a "prime directive" against them. The rest of the world all talks to one another. The galaxy doesn't seem to work like that in Star Trek - certainly not in the 24th century, and probably not the 32nd either.
Why would anyone want to build a Kardashev Type 2 society? What would they use this energy up for? The most advanced Trek societies are already post-scarcity with replicators & unlimited energy. No need to completely destroy their living environment just got the lulz.
You could build a computer with the mass of Jupiter, and use the raw computing power to generate a near infinite number of AI clones of people who may have existed, effectively resurrecting the dead, for one. Indeed, a lot of people now argue that it's more likely statistically speaking we live in a far future simulation of history than the original timeline, presuming humanity doesn't die out and makes more than one simulation of Earth's past.
Maybe it's just not a catch-all solution, but only for specific purposes, and the human body is already quite optimized for what it's doing, and tinkering with it when you don't have to do it (e.g. in case of diseases or injuries) just fucks up too many other parts in this delicate balance so that you have to cascade your tinkering to address unforeseen consequences, again and again. until it all becomes a mess?
I guess. But we're already tinkering around the edges. I know for a fact that China is putting research into how to use human genome editing to make future generations smarter and healthier, for example. Maybe it will all blow up, but provided we're just trying to make more people at the 99.9th percentile of aptitude, and not breaking new ground, I don't expect it to be that difficult.
It's true that Trek never had a true singularity. But that is an "endpoint" in most sci-fi stories as well (OR it's just a "computer overlord to be defeated"). Right now there is just not a lot of interesting stories about this - even outside Trek - because it's just hard to imagine or predict.
I dunno. I feel like Iain Banks'
Culture series is in some ways what Star Trek could've been with a few more decades under its belt. There's a giant, multispecies federation, but it's really run by the super-intelligent AI's, who are benevolent, with most "humans" just spending their time high, having sex, or on hobbies. The analogue of Starfleet (
Special Circumstances) involves agents outside The Culture, because there's not fun stories within post-scarcity utopia.
