Current Events > Does Star Wars have a canon explanation for the stagnation of technology?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Playing KOTOR again makes me realise, literally 4000 years pass from these games to the events of the movie, and nothing has changed whatsoever. Blasters, droids, lightsabres, space travel, starships. It's all basically exactly the same.

The Death Star seemed rather advanced.

There was no stagnation of technology under Lucas.

So no.

Fuck that canon shit. If I hear one God damn word of explanation, I'll ignore it out of spite.

No

I would assume, even in a sci-fi or fantasy setting, at some point you're going to push the laws of physics as far as they can go.

IIRC tech actually has regressed compared to the past. I assume wars caused more damage and loss of life than expected and tech was lost instead of improving as war tends to do.

maybe humanity sort of hit a peak within the realm of what's possible? sort of weak explanation, but it's something?

the biggest advancement between the OR and the Skywalker era was probably the battle droids?

R2D2 to BB8 looks like an advancement in technology to me.

I can ramble about this topic forever. It's a problem that exists in a lot of sci-fi and fantasy fiction but the biggest reason why it's perceived as a problem is because of how viewers look at it from their own bias, having lived in an era where a lot of technological breakthroughs have happened one after the other. Also technology improves and develops based on human needs and how it's intertwined with financial systems, as opposed to advancement for the sake of advancement. 99% of the technological advancements we've seen throughout the past two centuries have been directly tied to streamlining the process of industrialization and securing/transferring finances with things like wars speeding the process up.

From a plot standpoint if the SW galaxy was at "peak technology" it'd be boring as hell and barely any of the in-universe problems would exist as they could easily be solved. Media set in the real world just a decade or two ago would be drastically different with a lot less conflict if something like smartphones existed. From a realistic standpoint it'd be logistically and financially impossible for every corner of the Galaxy to share the same technological/communications standards while also having the same long-term goals in mind.

One of my favorite swerves with this topic is how technology is handled in The Elder Scrolls. The games span roughly a millennia though technology's remained the same, and the reasoning why is that it's just more convenient and simple to use magic for many things, and that there's so much conflict in Tamriel that it's impossible for most societies to reach an industrialist stage without some major cataclysm happening, setting society back to square one.

Maybe they became so reliant on automation/droids that the actual humans forgot how to build stuff

Sort of like Idiocracy

DipDipDiver posted...

Maybe they became so reliant on automation/droids that the actual humans forgot how to build stuff

Sort of like Idiocracy

So laziness instead of eugenics?

I always figured that the real reason for the perceived downgrade in technology between the original and prequel trilogies was that the prequels took place in some of the most lavish parts of the civilized galaxy, while the original trilogy took place in the armpits and the boonies of society, and literally uninhabited planets. With the sequels, they mostly stick to the original trilogy aesthetics because it is once again a battle between guerilla fighters on the outskirts and the heavily armed empire. They stopped using battle droids and the like because obviously they just weren't very sensible. Literal genetically engineered super soldiers we're more sensible, and they stopped doing that too because it turns out that normal ass dudes did the job fine and clone armies are a stupid idea.

IShall_Run_Amok posted...

I always figured that the real reason for the perceived downgrade in technology between the original and prequel trilogies was that the prequels took place in some of the most lavish parts of the civilized galaxy, while the original trilogy took place in the armpits and the boonies of society, and literally uninhabited planets. With the sequels, they mostly stick to the original trilogy aesthetics because it is once again a battle between guerilla fighters on the outskirts and the heavily armed empire. They stopped using battle droids and the like because obviously they just weren't very sensible. Literal genetically engineered super soldiers we're more sensible, and they stopped doing that too because it turns out that normal ass dudes did the job fine and clone armies are a stupid idea.

Naw, that's because Lucas based the OT on cars from the 60's and the prequels on cars from the 50's. The 50's were peak "of the future!" with super slick designs and the like where the 60's were all about "the working man" with cars that did work. And the drop in droids was because the same as it is in real life: human lives are cheaper.

IShall_Run_Amok posted...

I always figured that the real reason for the perceived downgrade in technology between the original and prequel trilogies was that the prequels took place in some of the most lavish parts of the civilized galaxy, while the original trilogy took place in the armpits and the boonies of society, and literally uninhabited planets. With the sequels, they mostly stick to the original trilogy aesthetics because it is once again a battle between guerilla fighters on the outskirts and the heavily armed empire. They stopped using battle droids and the like because obviously they just weren't very sensible. Literal genetically engineered super soldiers we're more sensible, and they stopped doing that too because it turns out that normal ass dudes did the job fine and clone armies are a stupid idea.

I think this is more about KOTOR and the Old Republic games that take place millennia before the movies.

ellis123 posted...

Naw, that's because Lucas based the OT on cars from the 60's and the prequels on cars from the 50's. The 50's were peak "of the future!" with super slick designs and the like where the 60's were all about "the working man" with cars that did work. And the drop in droids was because the same as it is in real life: human lives are cheaper.

The first part is background production information (true though), and the second part is basically what I said but less general.

IShall_Run_Amok posted...

The first part is background production information (true though), and the second part is basically what I said but less general.

I debated on not typing up the second part as you had that one right, but it felt weird without it typed up. A bit too "full stop out of nowhere" for me.

i mean, technology doesnt move strictly linearly

a lot can happen in millennia. there are references to technology that has been lost to time or whatever in Star Wars media that takes place later in the timeline

LightHawKnight posted...

I think this is more about KOTOR and the Old Republic games that take place millennia before the movies.

Fair enough, I don't know anything about those games.

It's a weird galaxy. Can cross it in hours or days, but way behind Star Trek in the basic comforts of advanced societies.

Even then, the two aren't that different. If you're an ancient society that's tens of thousands of years old, your tech is still far beyond humans, even a thousand years later.

LightHawKnight posted...

I think this is more about KOTOR and the Old Republic games that take place millennia before the movies.

Well first of all, Kotor is not canon. So we don't really know what the galaxy was like 4000 years before in the Disney canon we have now.

In the old EU before the Kotor game, the Kotor comics did have a little more outdated looking technology. It was Bioware that designed their Kotor game to look very visually similar to the movies. Now I don't know the exact details, but also in the EU/Legends, the long war between the Sith and the Jedi in the Old Republic apparently leads to a sort of Dark Age when The Old Republic collapses, and a lot of knowledge and technology is lost. The Republic is then reestablished about thousand years before the prequel trilogy.

High Republic doesn't look that different than right before phantom menace.

ellis123 posted...

Naw, that's because Lucas based the OT on cars from the 60's and the prequels on cars from the 50's. The 50's were peak "of the future!" with super slick designs and the like where the 60's were all about "the working man" with cars that did work.

And then audiences who didn't get this perceived "sleeker and shinier" as meaning "more advanced" technology in the prequels.