That seems unlikely. I think that there has been so much time since the beginning of the universe that allows for life similar to what exists here to appear, that encountering species at close to our technological level is very, very unlikely. I mean, there could be species literally billions of years old around, and chances are they would have little to no interest in contacting us, which might explain why there seems to be no evidence for alien life - no need to assume everyone has taken the route humanity is taking.
I doubt that; since the universe had a beginning, and since all matter has had the same rules placed on it since that beginning, the speed at which planet Earth formed into an ideal place for life to begin is going to be about the same speed as any other planet, meaning those planets, perfect for life as is ours, had creatures evolving at about the same rate and in similar ways considering they've experienced a similar environment as ours, meaning they're roughly in the same spot that we are now: intelligent beings, sentient or otherwise, duking it out for resources, with little time to focus on developing the technology and gathering the resources necessary to travel at lightspeed for decades, if not centuries (not to mention being able to live that long, or to reproduce in-between), just to see more of the same.
The universe is only about 13 billion years old, with our planet having circled the sun about 4 and a half billion years ago (that means about 8-9 billion years are spent just trying to bring order to the chaos.) Within those 4 1/2 billion years, only the last billion has been spent with multi-cellular life forms, and only the last 200k years spent with your modern day man. Unless this sentient lifeform managed to find a way to evolve several magnitudes faster than the species of our planet, or those planets formed way faster than all the others, it's safe to say that, while we're not alone, there's little room to precede us in technological advancement, and even if there was, the universe is a huge place and if you have the technology to travel around like that, there's probably something much more interesting locally to that lifeform. Needless to say, there's no society that can be billions of years old, and no aliens are aware we exist aside from a mutual understanding that the odds of them being the only sentient species in the universe are zilch.
That's quite an anthropocentric view.
Anyway, first and foremost, a disclaimer: this isn't really my field, so if we have any expert among us, feel free to correct any mistake I make.
I guess the most important point where we disagree is at the very beginning: you're assuming conditions for Earth like planets, and eventually life, would require about the same time as it did here, while I see no reason to assume so. Population III stars - believed to have been the first stars, massive, short lived, and composed only of Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium - should have formed about 100 millions years after the Big Bang. Galaxies formed a few hundreds of millions of years after that, and population II stars formed at about that time as well, out of the remains of the population III stars. Subsequent population II stars gave rise to the first population I stars (Sun like) a few billion years after, maybe about 9 billion years ago.
From this point forward, I believe the chemical elements required for Earth like planets and life to have formed, might have existed in a proportion not too dissimilar to what you'd find today - so, I suppose the basis for Earth like life to have formed has existed for at least 9 billion years. From then on, and assuming very similar conditions, evolution of species and technological development, you could have had species similar to humans, at the same stage of development, 4.5 billion years ago. Of course, there is no reason, in my view, to limit this to Earth like life or development track, and perhaps at least some Population II stars could have already provided conditions suitable for life of some kind - or who knows, maybe even sooner.
Anyway, I think we've now successfully derailed this topic, and I blame Vod for that.
