I think Danny covered your first point pretty well. RPGs generally do the same racial extremism/stereotyping.
If nothing else, it's a shorthand for differentiating the races and from a roleplaying perspective, gives you a basic acting hook to protray the character.
On the latter, referring to my observation of ST's poor use of technology. I do suspect there was a morale factor to manually handing out the messages. But the show repeatedly fails to clue into the idea that DataPadds should be in constant networked contact with each other and with the ship's computer (the server). You should not need to manually walk your DataPadd over to the captain to give him your report. You should submit it to his email account, and he'll see it as a notification on his own DataPadd or at the nearest Console he is working at (after all, the ship KNOWS where you are at all times).
The tech observation was less on fancy graphics they could have shown us, merely this simple concept of accessing data from anywhere was not rocket science and was feasible in 1995 when the show started.
To me, a lot of the Tech-That-Came-True of Star Trek was that which was casually displayed and used, without a lot of explanation, and seemed obvious as an idea to the viewer. The touch screens and DataPadds in general, transporters, TriCorders are such devices.
Seeing the DataPadds get walked around was where it sunk back to old-tech thinking with Ensigns in miniskirts getting signatures on giant clipboards. It smacks of businesses today that adopt new technology but utilize it in the old process, rather than to its more direct functionality.
