I rather doubt that in my lifetime, we'll actually discover signals that indicate the existence of intelligent life beyond the Solar System. However, my doubts are based purely on the sheer scale of the exercise, which makes searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack a piece of cake. I believe with absolute certainty that there are very large numbers of other planets throughout the universe with life developed well beyond where we are today.
That said, Unless the "wormhole technology" of science fiction - Stargate style - for want of a better description, is ever developed/discovered, then physically meeting aliens will forever remain in the realms of science fiction. We will only ever know of their past existence through signals we receive now which may have started their journey many thousands if not millions of years ago. Indeed, the original senders' planetary environment may long since have been destroyed by the time any signal reaches us.
For me, when, not if, SETI discovers the evidence of intelligent life beyond the Solar System, this will then truly place humanity in its relatively unimportant place in the universe.
All this will just represent yet another step forward in human perception, from the early beliefs of a flat earth with everything revolving around it, through to the sun as the centre of the universe, then the discovery that the sun is merely an average star on the edge of an average galaxy which is in turn part of small cluster of galaxies.
The very idea that "we" could be the only intelligent life in all of this is pure human conceit. That would make "us" a very serious anomaly surely, in the overall scheme of the universe.
THE SCALE OF IT ALL: Try your own scale model of the universe at http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/
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