But a collective consciousness that includes all of current and future human experience, so that every human still existing by the time that humanity "evolves" will become a permanent part of human consciousness. Right?

If all of that is true I like how they didn't spell it out. It would have felt too expositiony to explain all that, and the people who don't need all that much depth would probably be bored by it, and the people who do care are probably smart enough to figure it out for themselves.

And I wonder how that will include the aliens. We're supposed to save the aliens somehow, and I wonder if that isn't supposed to be merging with THEM in a way that our separate collective experience will somehow affect their own collective consciousness. Much as the merging of ideas throughout human history has expanded and grown the ideas and cultures of specific societies (e.g. like how Middle Eastern culture spurred the Renaissance in Europe.)

If so then it's a clever way to comment on current events while also commenting on human cultural history in general.