In this recent post about the Star Wars city planet Coruscant, Chaz makes this comment:
“…On a further aside - what's with the technological stagnation in the star wars universe? My grandmother was born in 1916 and today she uses a kindle with ease! It always seemed weird to me that KOTOR tech was in line with Episode IV etc…”
It’s true that we still think more about the cool tech, and enduring “lived in” look of Star Wars than why this 25,000 year old galaxy-spanning civilization does not advance much in terms of the functionality of the equipment available. Over the thousands of year of the Republic, little changes outside of, perhaps, the architecture and style-design of weapons and gear. Pod Racers might be popular towards the end of the Galactic Republic, while Swoop Bikes are the choice for racing 4,000 years prior, but very little goes forward in the technology that drives and powers things. The biggest technological difference that comes to mind to me time and time again is that the protocol droids are far less mincing than their Empire era counterparts (but still a little light in the loafers) although that is sketchy research matter at best. Bottom line; if C3PO was proficient in over 6 million languages, odds are that was the same amount a Knights of The Old Republic droid would be proficient in.
Comlinks are the cell phones of the Star Wars Universe, and Datapads seem to be the Laptops/Netbooks of folks. You would think that just like the real world these things would change fastest and the most, but between the KOTOR period and the Trilogy period, the tech has not changed. In fact, in the classic Star Wars periods you do not see many Datapads at all, usually only in the hands of tech dudes on the Hoth base or whatever. But as little as 30 years prior in the Clone War era Anakin is seen goofing around with one on the couch. So did they just get too expensive in the Empire era? Was everybody just too busy shitting their pants to even think about such frivolous items?
In Dune, the universe had a pretty good excuse for keeping tech from advancing. They had bad prior experiences with robots, so they banned all computers any more advanced than an abacus. There’s yer technological retardation right there. Not even the Golden Path could overcome that fear.
But Star Wars has no such excuses. What’s the deal?
One could say that the galaxy and Republic is constantly being faced by devastating wars again and again, usually involving the Sith and the Jedi. This not only costs huge numbers in lives and sucks up resources, but puts many thriving planets, again and again over the millennia, into periods of urban decay and semi-post apocalypses. When this happens to major industrial areas, technological growth gets retarded. OK, but you soon have to hand-wave theories like this, because wars tend to bring forth greater and great technologies that eventually trickle down to the masses. That does not seem to be happening (outside of the occasional Death Star or Star Forge).
So could the very presence of Jedi as constant allies in the Republic over the millennia have something to do with technological retardation? Probably not, because after most Jedi are gone regular folk seem to fuck things up pretty good on the high tech front. Everybody heads for the hills when The Empire takes over, and most of their ships and vehicles don’t seem to be able to even get a paint job, much less an upgrade. Hey, when the highest tech items on Tatooine are either used to vaporate moisture or bullseye Womp Rats, you know you are in a universe in decline.
But I think my “Toaster Theory” is the most logical fit. You see, toasters have barely changed in almost 100 years. They must be the least changed technology in our real world. Sure, they have come in countless designs and styles on the shelves of Sears stores over the decades, but when the day is done they all still heat your toast and your Pop tarts by heating up metal coils. That’s it. Why? I think it must have something to do with functionality meets cost-benefit analysis meets the point of diminishing returns. Could we come up with better ways to toast our multi-grain grub-outs if we threw a lot of money at it? Sure. We could probably also set little laser beam blast traps to disintegrate the mice infesting the garage, only 2.1 million dollars per trap down at Rite-Aid! But will it kill mice better than a spring-loaded roll bar that breaks it’s neck for 3 bucks? Nope. Don’t need a better mouse trap. Come to think of it, in Star Wars they would probably have it be a low tech Rube Goldberg-like device with gears and poles and descending cages like the old board game.
So maybe in the Star Wars universe, blasters work as good as you need them too and still be able to afford them. How much faster does a starship need to go once it’s in hyperspace? Would it make that huge a difference to spend three times the money to get somewhere a day sooner? And when your police force numbers in the millions and your armed forces number in the billions, can you afford to give them all blasters that do double damage, and give them all hand held super-computers? Could you divert needed funds towards teleportation technology? Who would set-up all these resources? And could such advances actually ignite wars over them, fracturing the Republic even more than the endless beatings it takes over the thousands of years of it’s existence?
In all Star Wars eras computers not changing is the real head scratcher. They seem to be in the early to mid-80’s Earth level of tech millennia-in, millennia-out. So…there are no Steve Jobs types in the SW universe? Perhaps there are some planets in the universe with super-tech that has actually advanced beyond those you see in general population use in Darth Vader’s time or Darth Revan’s time. But what works and is cost-effective on a planetary scale probably is not on a galactic scale.
OK, obviously I have no answers, and the Toaster Theory™ only goes so far. But apparently The Republic after the Empire era sufferes for it’s lack of tech advancement and too much reliance on The Force when the Yuuzhan Vong invade the galaxy. With their own bizarre organic hi-tech weaponry and immunity to The Force, they are enough to make the sentients of the galaxy wish they had put more nose to the grindstone in the technology department, and less in ancient weapons and hokey religions.
I am glad that you brought up this point. I think the inhabitants of the Star Wars Galaxy just quit trying once they had personal spaceships and laser swords. It's kind of like those society in fantasy novels that stay in the Middle Ages for thousands of years. They tsay to themselves, "Hey, we have crossbows that can kill an enemy from 200 feet away and sailing ships that can take us to the other side of the world (provided it's not flat) in a few months and we also have wizards and clerics to cast spells for us so what more is there to invent?"
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I agree, as much as I love the KOTOR storyline/timeline, it's a bit absurd that nothing is really that different from the "current" timeline.
ReplyDeleteThere is a new comic series though called Dawn of the Jedi which is--you guessed it--set pre Jedi/Sith when there was one force and (GASP!) no lightsabers!
I agree with part of your post, particularly the Law of Diminishing Returns. The other part is that probably one of the reasons that Stars Wars has stagnated is that the level of technological innovation has pretty much been reached (from the writers' perspectives)
ReplyDeleteLet's use a simple math equation to explain the point. Say it's the year 1900. Say the the sum of human knowledge is a number equal to 100. That means our "tech level" is 100. Say that in the year 1900, we have so many technological achievements that it increases the sum of human knowledge to 200, a 100% increase. Next year, we do it again so that in the year 1902, our level has increased to 300. Is this a 100% increase? No, it's only an increase of 50%. By the time we reach the year 2000, we've only increased our knowledge by 1.01%. By the time we get to the year 5000, our tech level is 310,100 (awesome), but we only increase the sum of our human knowledge by 0.03%. If we were to have a galactic war in which we lose 5% of our knowledge in one year, it would take 155 years to regain that lost knowledge.
Secondly, the Stars Wars universe stagnates because all the major breakthroughs are done, all the big discoveries that gives understanding to the very being of the Universe has been discovered. The laws of physics that determine what can and cannot be done are discovered. Now all that is left is power efficiency and scaling. That work will involves decades, maybe hundreds of years of work to squeeze out an extra .0001%.
Of course, we look at the technology of the Stars Wars and as the human race evolves, we actually outpace the understanding of the stories themselves, so we have to take the limits of human understanding with a grain of salt at that time the stories were created.
There are other factors to consider as well such as the speed of communication, how knowledge is safe-guarded or distributed, whether innovation is encouraged, regulations, economics (which you touched on and I agree with that as well), religion, and resource scarcity.
I personally find it more believable for a futuristic society to stagnate when it reaches "all that it can discover" than for fantasy societies that still are stuck in the equivalent of the medieval ages for thousands or tens of thousands of years. The Forgotten Realms is a prime example (but I still love the setting though!)
By the Sword: I always thought that the very presence of dwarves and other little engineering races would bring along an industrial age lickety split in a fantasy world. After 120 years of continuity in my D&D world, I often consider having the begginings of steam pipe tech and simple machines turn up in human cities, much like you often see when you go to dwarf cities far underground. But I always hesitate because it's sort of letting out the genie. My world would change. But would that be so bad?
ReplyDeleteJay: I'll check that out.
Yong: Ya had to get all mathematical on me.
I guess there is also secret societies to consider. Mass conspiracy. Personally, I don't trust those Jedi. They're too much like those damn Bene Gesserits witches.
First of all... mmmm. Toast.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, great post. And I always liken the 'stagnation' of the Star Wars setting to those long periods of our own earthly culture where things remained 'basically' the same. How many centuries of our own history were horses the utmost form of transportation. Yes, the stuff associated with horses changed- better saddles, stirrups, horse-shoes, etc., but the core was still the same- a horse. It's really the only last 100 years that we've seen such rapid changes. It isn't the 'norm', and I'm not sure it will continue steadily, let alone exponentially. But what do I know. Maybe in 100 years we'll all be beings of pure energy...or great big blobs of flesh and brain attached to a machine. The latter sometimes seems more likely...