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-Father of Vulcan phylosophy(forgot his name): "Nothing unreal exists"
-Spock: "Logic is the beginning of wisdom..."

As for Vulcans and Terrans... Before the Federation was formed, Vulcans were way ahead of Terrans. However, since the same (Federation) technology is now available to both, there's really no basis for contrasting them.

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"Alright, so it's impossible. How long will it take?"
-Commander Adams, Forbidden Planet

Serious answer: Their technology is roughly equivalent, but could be ranked as follows....

1. Humans: Humans are, by the standards of all the other races, crazy, and will try anything. Watch any episode of TOS and you'll see that this is true.

   More importantly, humans are very curious and can't leave well-enough alone. They'll tweak a system to get the best performance, but they also tweak systems to see what happens if...?

   That's where the humans have the edge. They think outside the box, and are intuitive enough to figure out ways to exploit processes and resources that the other races are likely to view as marginal. For example, did you know that gasoline was originally just a waste product produced when refining kerosene? Now our whole civilization is dependent upon it.

   On a more serious note, I have noticed that humans have one quality that makes them rather different from most other races (at least, as they are portrayed in the Trek universe): They are generally more willing to extend trust to others. This speeds up crosstalk between project team members, as well as between teams working on different projects altogether.

2. Vulcans: Vulcans are less prone to lateral thinking, and although their logical and methodical research and development methods are productive, they don't produce at the rate the humans do.

   This is not entirely a bad thing. It's hard to imagine a Vulcan experiment accidentally exploding and killing anyone. If I wanted the safest starship around, I'd see if they could build (or at least design) it for me.

   Vulcan willingness to extend trust to other team members is superior to humans, at least when the other team members are Vulcans -- it would be illogical not to trust another Vulcan with the same objective as yours. If any team members were not Vulcan, however, they would be (at least initially) reluctant to entrust knowledge that is not obviously required to non-Vulcans. Vulcans can be rather xenophobic, but they aren't stupid about it.

3. Romulans: If it weren't for the fact that the Romulan government (in all probability) views research as a potential source of state secrets, I would suspect their technology would outstrip that of the humans. As it stands, however, I imagine there is little cross-talk between developers of seemingly unrelated projects.

   Even once a technology has been developed, I imagine they impose strict control over who has access to the knowledge required to design, build, and maintain any technology with a military potential.

4. Klingons: Although the Klingons recognize the value of thinking outside the box, and they are definitely not stupid, I imagine that the Klingons do value the contributions of the individual more than the group. As a result, there is a lower level of cooperation between individuals working on a project.

   This is not to say that there is no cooperation whatsoever, but Klingons operating as a team must first overcome their desire to be the "star player". This very likely reduces the cross-talk between team members, at least during the beginning stages of a new project. Loyalty to the team, once the team has finished their initial integration, would tend to reduce crosstalk between teams working on different projects, at least until some level of trust could be established between the two teams.

5. Cardassians: Cardassians suffer the same problems that the Romulans do, with an additional complication. Due to the limited resources available, they very likely do not indulge in as much research and design as the other races. They just can't afford it. Most of their efforts have gone into projects which promise to give Cardassia a military edge over others.

   Combined with reduced crosstalk between teams working on disparate projects is a necessary caution when dealing with other team members. You don't always know who the government spy in the team is, so you can't afford to get too familiar with the other team members.

As I said above, the different races are very closely ranked, at least as far as military capability. I suspect that the Vulcans have more theoretical knowledge than any of the other races, while the humans have more practical knowledge than anyone else, in more areas of endeavor, if only because we're really curious about everything. Of course, we'd probably be way out in front, but there's a lot of wasted effort along lines of interest that probably won't produce tangible results. After all, our race is probably the only one that has patents on file for perpetual motion machines .

--Baloo

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It is less important that you agree with me than it is for you to to understand what I'm saying.

http://members.tripod.com/~Bob_Baloo/index.htm

One might add to the Cardassian aspects, for example. "Destiny" seems to say that women take care of engineering and research in the Union because men are too impulsive. This suggests a typically meticuous Cardassian approach that discourages innovation in order to promote steady building of knowledge. Male Cardassian scientists tend to be on the crazy side, if the one doctor from "Nothing Human" is anything to go by. So there might be an additional factor in Cardassian science - it advances in leaps only when the sex barrier is broken and crazy male innovations seep into the female realm of steady research. This might in fact be a greater limit on cooperation than the fear of Big Brothers (Sisters!) in the research team.

Also, while humans may have the advantage of lateral thinking, the Klingons may also have the disadvantage of concentrating on very narrow fields of science. Their cloaks seem superior to Romulan ones, given how Klingons can insert operatives on Romulus itself, yet their basic research might be lacking so that all they can do is improve on existing technologies (ones they have captured or otherwise aquired from others).

Romulans probably suffer from no such limitations since their society is not ruled by tradition to such an extreme degree. Still, their general backstabbing approach to eveything may have prompted them to rely heavily on espionage and capturing/reverse-engineering, resulting in a corresponding loss of basic research skills.

Technology transfer from one empire to another ought to be easy for the Feds (because of their adapability), and the Klingons and Romulans (because of their experience in reverse-engineering). This could place the Cardassians in a severe disadvantage, since they neither seem to have a big, flexible basic research machine, nor are in a position to capture the tech of others (since their crappy ships can't raid those of the advanced races). They might compensate by buying hardware from the Ferengi and information from the Yridians.

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-Surak: "Nothing unreal exists"
-Spock: "Logic is the beginning of wisdom..."

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-Surak: "Nothing unreal exists"
-Spock: "Logic is the beginning of wisdom..."

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Fool of a Took, throw yourself in next time!!
Gandalf

I don't think we can break down the Federation too much in terms of technology. Sure, there are going to be some differences from place to place. (Bolians might really like antigrav chairs, while Andorians won't sit on anything that isn't hard wood, or the Andorian equivilant.) But I tend to view the Federation as a single entity when it comes to such things.

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Death before Dishonor!
However Dishonor has
quite a disputed defintion.

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

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Spend all your time waiting for a second chance, a break that would make it ok...