I will say that my mind is not really up to the task of trying to solve this, and that I still half think CCP is sitting back waiting for something that a player says to strike their interest and then they will go with that. But I'll just throw this out there, based on some stuff below, and a bit of Mass Effect storyline. Sorry if someone has suggested this before.
What if this is all a game? I mean, in universe, all of this stuff going on is basically a game, a string of deceptions created for the sole purpose of diverting us podders and to a lesser extent the Empires. Think about this. There is a caste of powerful people with little to no controls over them, the podders. This caste is immortal, but new members are born every year, so it grows ever larger, and ever more powerful. Now ever some of the Empires are being lead by these podders. At some point, it would not be far off to assume that the majority of all people in the Eve Universe will be podders, just through the theory of evolution.
Now take the Jovians, who for all we have seen of them, are such a society, one that is declining after having reached its peek. Assume they could see that humans in the Empires were gradually evolving into what they were, and that as some point they would take over their place. And maybe most of the Jovians do not want to be dismissed so easily. Still, they know that even if they killed every last human in Eve, it would not stop their eventual replacement by something, so they decide to guide their replacement to take as long as possible. They influence the primative races evolving into the four empires, guide them along paths that will bring them into conflict. Think of the random chance it would take to have a religious empire within spitting distance of a tribal race that would resist slavery. Or of a democracy existing in the same system as a corporate government. Take it even further, wonder why there are ancient races that seemed to live in the exact areas that modern day races inhabit. We know there were previous Jovian Empires. Could they have influenced them as they may influence us? And it continues today. CONCORD, an organization the Jovians helped create, continues this conflict with a proxy war that will never end because its instigators will never die.
Then the next step. The Jovians know that sooner or later tech to rivel their own will come up, so they make sure that the tech that arrises mirrors their own, tech they know the weaknesses to. They give us the pod, and cloning. Then, just when we might discover something new on our own, we find Terran artifacts that becomes the Emperess's superweapon. There was a Jovian ship there, completing a mission. And then rogue drones open the wormholes. How would Gallente drones, no matter how corrupted, know how to do that, unless someone else told them to do it. So, the wormholes open up and we drop everything to steal the tech we find there instead of advancing our own. Tech from Sleepers, and who knows who they are. An ancient race, one of the Jovian's former pawns, filling a new role maybe? Then, when that winds up being easy and yesterday's news, the Sansha attack. Sansha who somehow managed to arrive in a Jovian system and take over a Jovian station, dispite not having technology that is greatly advanced from the Empires. And again, we do not question, but take this technology directly from them, using their own ships even.
Where does all of this bring us? We are being kept in balance, so that we will never find out something for ourselves, never join with each other and become a threat to the Jovians until we have served our purpose for them. As for what that is, maybe they will just kill us all and have the worlds start afreash. Maybe we will join with them to continue the cycle on others. Or maybe they will force us to replace them, and become the next Jovian empire as they die out, following their plan as we decieve the next races to be born.
Or I'm leting my inner conspiracy freak out a bit too much.