Stark Trek - How far are we?
byrneseyeview: The future is weird. Asking how many discoveries away from reaching Star Trek is like asking how many Ivy League degrees you need before you turn into Obama.The whole space opera thing is fairly unlikely. It's more likely that the world we'll be able to simulate in our own solar system will be much more interesting than any world we'd be able to visit outside of it.The future depends on what you extrapolate; Star Trek goes from trains to planes to space; right now, lots of interesting fiction goes from PCs to ubiquitous computing to uploads. Whatever's next is unlikely to resemble any of that in any way.