Ummm it’s hard to do without giving up a wonderful 9-book, 7 or 8 novella plot, but I’ll do my best. It’s ultimately a space opera, but the ideas explored are well thought out and intriguing. I don’t think it really gets as deep into what you’re looking for as you’d like but it’s still a wonderful book series.
Future humans, in our solar system, lots of political intrigue between the powers of the UN (all of earth), the Martian Congressional Republic, and the Outer Planets Alliance (people of the asteroid belt, less of a govt, more of a political movement). Someone finds what might be alien life or alien technology (possibly sitting for a billion years in outlets solar system), and the rest is what happens to humans in the wake of that.
The tech itself gets into possible collective consciousness, planet-sized carbon crystal data storage and quantum entanglement. Along with things like worm hole technology and heavily bending (but not really breaking) the laws of physics.
It’s all written with VERY sound scientific thought behind every little nuance of the story and all the tech involved.
As a musician who has been following this closely for a while, it keeps getting worse and worse. Musicians of my status have less and less opportunities to make a living off of our art in a world that is becoming increasingly easier to produce and distribute in. I’ve done this a long time and have had moderate success in the past. It’s to the point now though that the ways I THOUGHT musicians made money was never available to me, and the way we DID make money when I started almost doesn’t exist anymore either.