Comment by lukifer

My favorite solution: The galaxy is teeming with life, but in the form of quasi-immortal software that lives at such vast timescales, they're as uninterested in talking to us as we would be in talking to a fruit fly. (Imagine Space Ents that say hello, and are perfectly content to wait 10,000 years for a reply.) It may well be that becoming such a life form is the only practical way to deal with the speed-of-light constraint, either in travel or communication.