The entire empire is going through big changes currently, much of it prompted by the technological change.

Less than ten years ago the empire was solidly TL 10 with very few prototype TL 11 things as curiosities and now TL 11 is starting to spread widely, if still a bit rare.

Changes of note that most people notice:

• Information:
  • At maximally 2 pc/day speeds of information travel it took weeks or months for news and other information to propagate.
  • Now with gates between major systems, truly breaking news likely reaches the other connected systems in an hour or less. Normal priority mail can expect to reach the recipient in couple of days. This allows for things like managing businesses in several star systems as a single entity.
  • Even for central systems without gates the new mail ships moving at 4.5 pc/day have doubled the information travel speed and as the speed is counted from nearest gates for long distance communication the total time for far away is way less.
  • The imperial postal service increasing the data transferred at the same cost by a factor of 10 two years ago has made way more information available at reasonable cost in the smaller systems and has seen the raise of many more private information providers with interstellar scope.
• Travel
  • Before, going anywhere interstellar took a long time with fast liners traveling at 2 pc/day and slow at 1 pc/day.
  • Now with gates: if you have the money you can travel from a planet in one starsystem with a gate to a planet in another starsystem with gate in less than three days.
  • Even travel to systems without gates is much faster, both because you can use gates for part of the trip in longer trips and because the faster liners travel at 3 or 4.5 pc/day and nearly none of the 1 pc/day liners are in use anymore on regular passenger routes.
• Interaction with aliens
  • The linking of gates with other races has both allowed much easier travel to far away places to visit far civilizations and for the aliens to do the same in human worlds.
  • This has increased the travel between them enormously. Many humans had never seen an alien ten years ago, but today the sight of a Salarian, Asari or Turian strolling down the street hardly causes a comment even in smaller communities.
• Empires dominance
  • Before the Great fleet rebuilding the total imperial budget was slightly more then that of a single of the great noble houses. Now it is equal to about 10 such. The imperial service is three times a big as it was 10 years ago.
  • The increased communications has caused many people to see themselves more as subjects of the empire instead of only their starsystem.
  • These factors and the possible external threat have caused the empire to become much more powerful in relation to the noble houses.
• New technologies
  • Many new technologies are making their way to general use. This has many effects.
  • This means retraining for many people to use them.
  • Many new fortunes are made and lost as the new technology is deployed and learned.
  • Medical use of nanomachines is making many treatments much better and faster.
  • The huge increase in manufacturing capacity that is happening will likely increase overall wealth.
• Colonies
  • There are more than double the number of human colony worlds now than was the case 20 years ago.
  • New colonies are starting all the time.