If someone can make those machines work, then hey, great. I'll argue about who is the Vulcans or Romulans once we get those space ships built, but personally, I hope the spaceships from Earth end up looking cooler than those stupid disks.

That shit just does not have style. I want the Enterprise, not some 1930s 'invasion from Mars" reject junk.

If I remember correctly, there were issues in the 1500s and the protestant reformation where the existing religions (all of them) were happy with their medieval equilibrium and pretty much all new technology and science was "of the devil". 90% of human technological development happened after the protestant reformation.

We really are slowing down to a period of technology stagnation right now with not much getting done outside of some bright little communication gizmos. It is getting about time for something bigger and maybe it is those energy field machines. They could do now what happened 10K years ago when mankind discovered or was given the "secret" of fire.

Thing is, a technology shift to those new machines is inevitable, and highly profitable for whoever makes it happen. It does not mean the old stuff totally goes away, I mean, trains never went away even when cars became the dominant form of transportation, but centralized energy production can't work in the developing world anyway. The infrastructure can't be built as fast as it is needed, the same way cell phones are making it in Africa when landlines never did get fully distributed. These "zero point' generators running on that magnetic shit, whatever...just get some built and on the market and do the legal arguments later.