Well; fiction is really hard to do, period! Fiction without conflict, even more so. Isn't one of the main criticisms of Gene Roddenberry work that the lack of conflict he mandated made writing difficult, and the relations between human characthers, flat?
What really dumbfounded me as I watched the series (a decade ago, I marathoned the entire thing, Original Series to Enterprise + all movies in release order; took a few months) was that the Vulcan are reputed and louded as this overly logical species, so rigorous in their thought process that it can go to their detriment), but everytime an episode centered on them, it was always about something tribal, like a ritual, that generated the issue to solve. They never act logical. I mention this because I always knew it is actually the same problem. You need to create conflict. And logic is not a good candidate if generalized...
That said, you are right, Picard was a snob in that scenario. That's more of an issue of a localized Utopia being oxymoronic. We already have pockets of happiness as it is...
As for machines... it don't underestimate what they could became. Still, my idea never supposed that machines would do everything, just create the conditions for the cheap emulation of everyone's chosen perfection. We still would need subjective creativity to define what that is, and to shape our tastes.
Roddenberry first postulated this "Earth is utopia due to the New Humans movement" in his tie-in novel of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Will Decker was part of it.
TMP at one time was supposed to be a TV series, so some elements of it were used for the movie and some were used in TNG. Decker and Ilia became Riker and Troi, for example, but the Vulcan officer Xon was eliminated from TNG (though the actor had a bit part in TMP; he played Commander Branch, one of V'ger's early victims on the way to Earth before the Enterprise left).
In an interesting twist, fan film producer James Cawley acquired a slew of authentic TOS costumes, other assorted stuff, plus unproduced scripts for the TV series that never got made. So he launched the Star Trek: New Voyages/Phase II series of fan films, using some of those unproduced scripts, plus others. Xon was a Phase II character who had a Bridge position (of course Spock was a character as well). Cawley himself played Kirk for most of the episodes and we the fans got used to seeing a dark-haired Captain Kirk (Cawley's real job at the time was working as an Elvis impersonator, so he had to keep his hair color and style as-is). Some original TOS actors appeared in various episodes - there's an episode that's Chekov-centric, one that's Sulu-centric, and one that features Nichelle Nichols in her last appearance as Uhura.
I found TNG to be mostly boring. Q was interesting, and Tasha Yar is my favorite character in that series. Of course the scriptwriters gave her little to do that actually developed the character, and the actress quit.
The basic difference between TOS and TNG, in addition to the stupid "we don't use money in this century" BS (yes, they do, or Beverly couldn't have charged her account on the Enterprise to buy that hideous cloth on Farpoint), is how initial conflict is handled.
TOS version: Alien is encountered, gets aggressive. Kirk makes a decision that may involve getting aggressive back, even if it includes a punch to the offender's nose.
TNG version: Alien is encountered, get aggressive. Picard calls a meeting where Troi either senses or doesn't sense something, Worf says something in a growly voice about how superior Klingons are, and technobabble ensues. If Kirk had done this in TOS, he wouldn't have survived the first month of his five-year mission, let alone 3 years (plus however long TAS was meant to last).
Roddenberry opted not to use Vulcans in TNG as he said he didn't want a complete copy of TOS. The one who did sneak in was Dr. Selar, who was played by the same actress who played Worf's half-Klingon mate K'eylehr.
To me, the attempt to show a totally amicable, conflict-free crew in season 1 made it a snore. Conflict was introduced in season 2 by adding Pulaski (CMO who replaced Crusher) by having her be racist toward Data (trying to recreate the Spock/McCoy feud with Data and Pulaski). It didn't go over well. The shame of it is that I really liked Pulaski otherwise. She was a breath of fresh air - someone who was smart, knew what she was doing, and never hesitated to tell off the Captain if he needed it. Her first episode (the one where Deanna gets pregnant) was originally supposed to be part of the Phase II series-that-never-was, with Ilia getting pregnant). Some fanon (fan-canon) says that Pulaski was McCoy's great-granddaughter, which would explain her distrust of both transporters and androids, and her abrupt manner. She would have grown up on his stories about the original Enterprise and internalized some of his attitudes.
The Vulcans in DS9 were largely absent, though one did turn up at Quark's, attempting to buy weapons. Quark introduces her to the concept of combining logic with the Rules of Acquisition ("You want to acquire peace, so it makes sense to do it by...").
Voyager did okay with the two Vulcan crewmembers they had, though they handled the pon-farr issue in a ridiculous way (both times).
But Enterprise... Holy crap, that show is awful in so many ways and turning the Vulcans into racists with only one hairstyle for the entire damn planet was one of them. This notion that mind melds were some dirty, perverted thing is not what was established in TOS. They could be, as we saw in ST VI when Spock essentially mind-rapes Valeris for information she doesn't know. But if mind melds are a normal part of Vulcan mating rituals (the two bonded as children after completing the Kahs-wan ritual shown in the TAS episode "Yesteryear") and T'Pau saying to Spock, "Give me your thoughts", not to mention the Kohlinar priestess melding with Spock when he senses V'ger, that only helps cement my assertion that Enterprise does not take place in the same timeline as TOS. (oh, and the katra ritual is yet another type of mind meld, and something the Vulcans have been doing for millennia)
Now about machines. A huge part of art involves the emotions of the creator. In performing art, you need them, or at least the ability to control them to produce the emotions (or lack) of the character you're portraying. Emotions help with music. I've heard note-perfect musicians perform in a very technical way and it doesn't move me. I actually fell asleep at a concert where a note-perfect pianist played and it was just so much boring plink-plunk to me. But get a pianist who puts their emotions into it and it makes all the difference. Or in the case of Wuauquikuna - a group of Andean musicians from Ecuador who play various types of flutes and percussion instruments. They sing in Spanish and Quechua, but they put so much emotion into their performances that the reactions on their livestreams have ranged from people crying in sorrow to one man typing, "My wife is dancing around the living room right now!".
No machine-made or performed music could ever replicate this ability. I've experienced it myself with the organ. I put my emotions into it, which resulted in one of my grandmother's friends throwing her cards down on the table (500 Rummy was something she took Very Seriously and normally would never do that) - and started dancing beside the card table, completely into the music and unself-conscious about it (I was playing a waltz). It was one of the highest compliments I've ever received for my music, and she didn't have to say a word.
For other types of art? Sure, there are lots of digital patterns now, and all you need is a program to convert a photo to a cross-stitch pattern, complete with recommended shades of DMC floss. I'm not averse to trying those; waaaay back, CFC member Bozo Erectus created some beautiful pieces of MS Paint art (they're posted in the A&E forum) and he gave me permission to turn them into needlepoint or rug patterns if I wanted (naturally I'd never try to publish them and claim credit; I just thought they'd make beautiful wall art or rugs and he said I could).
However, no computer could have had the inspiration to create this art in the first place. Same with my own original patterns. I've made a lot of original 3-D needlepoint items either as commissions for other people or for myself when I wanted to make costume items or bookends. I've long had a dream of producing a series of cross-stitch patterns based on the solar system - planets, probes that visited them... that's been a dream for over 30 years. I've only gotten to the preliminary sketch phase; I need some really good drawings of the various probes to go by, not to mention that every so often we get new photos of the planets as they discover more about them. My original ideas for some of them would be inaccurate today.
en.wikipedia.org
And while -50C is 25 degrees out of my comfort zone, especially when it's windy, the Antarctic does have summer. And most penguin species don't live on Antarctica itself (though my favorite ones do). 
