The mainstream SETI community is just starting to come around to
thinking about other forms besides beings on a planet transmitting into
the galaxy via radio waves.

It wasn't until the late 1990s that Optical SETI started being accepted
by mainstream SETI, and that was first proposed in 1961 (or 1937, if
you count Albert Einstein's idea of aiming light beams at Mars).

http://www.coseti.org/mileston.htm

We are just starting to look at technological civilizations as more than just
current humans with taller buildings, hover cars, and manned spaceships
with rayguns.

Though this is fiction, it may be a more realistic portrayl of intelligent
technological (post-biological) life in the galaxy and beyond:

http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html