On the other hand, I love the Mass effect had subverted this trope by making literally all of this infrastructure a literal trap that we need to investigate, abuse and subvert, while it is still designed to kill us.

Another series that used this in a right way is the X series of games, where the old race is not only still alive, but also they have plans that we don't know, but still we managed to fuck it completely up. Therefore, while we do use that technology, we cannot even use it well, since from time to time, the gates are shuffled to keep us all locked in our part of the galaxy, until we or they manage to fix the galactic fuckup Terrans did with Xenon.