"}Dumb sci-fi premise #137: The Earth is contacted by a galactic federation of planets, but there\u2019s a problem: it\u2019s literally a federation of planets. Its members are all planetary-scale hive minds, and non-hive-mind species aren\u2019t ordinarily admitted. The Earth, however, presents an unprecedented exception: it\u2019s the first and only known case of a non-hive-mind species artificially constructing a planetary consciousness. Earth\u2019s inhabitants are understandably quite confused, as we aren\u2019t aware of constructing any such thing \u2013 until it becomes clear that federation ambassador is in fact talking about the Internet.
(Ultimately, the Internet is granted galactic citizenship. The legal status of individual humans takes some figuring out, since humans are necessary for the Internet\u2019s emergent consciousness to exist, but don\u2019t directly participate in it in the same way that members of a hive-mind species do. Eventually a consensus is reached to classify individual humans under a term that probably should be translated as \u201cservice animal\u201d, but for diplomatic reasons is not.)