[extropy-chat] Spike, father of Ferenginar

[Lifespan Pharma/Morris Johnson CTO]

I think it is simply tagging  patterns to stereotypes.
We could all be Binares but how could you play out social and 
technological drama with that.

ST did do other species like symbiotic species and shapeshifters.

My opinion is that the shapeshifters are the truest representation of 
what we might call transhumans.
Maybe that should be a lesson to humans.
Kurzweil's cybernetic emulation of a human would be quite capable of 
body and cell rearrangements.
The level of computation required to shape shift in real time  reeks of 
quantum computational mechanics.

I find most technology in ST prophetic except one.. starships.

I rather see starships like the one represented in the sentient organism 
in the form of a starship.
The crystalline entity is much like an AI.
The Q are repesentative of post shapeshifting species evolved beyond all 
space and time and simply bored with
continued existance and without will or drive to seek any further 
evolution or quests....sort of like a cosmic stoner gutter-rat.

Hope I have not insulted anybody's favorite alien.

I always found an underlying storyline worthy of deep thought in most 
episodes, although the last parts of DS9 were running
on nearly empty.  Our farmer cable lately has not let me keep up on 
"enterprise" but it seems to have some good points too.

What has been good is that the time;lines inal the series have mostly 
agreed with each other.

It would be good to see a post-voyager series that brings singularity 
and borg , muti-dimension and Q and shape shifters  along to the 35 or 
so century.  A timeline crossing series could add links between all the 
past series and deal with a bit of all those old issues. 
To me a dimensional-time ship has more reality than a warping 
space-folding QE2.