[bbitmaster]

I'm always struck by the giant CRTs in futuristic 80's movies. Blade runner is one example where there are scenes with CRT screens that even look very blurry/dated compared to the screen I'm watching on.

Also, this is a recent one, but in Star Wars rogue one, I felt it was odd how they had what looked like an IT nightmare. Seriously, they had to physically fly to the base and deal with a robotic arm connecting hard drives (was it tape drives?). Sure they have humanoid robots that are way beyond any tech today, but their cloud storage was basically current and even old school tech. Why don't they have some tiny crystal that stores unlimited data or DNA storage in a small cylinder or something that you would expect in the future? To be fair it is a "long time ago in a galaxy far away" but still, are we technologically ahead of those death star builders in some way?

[supermw]

In Star Wars very few people know how to read, let alone read and write code.

This is a consequence of a world where technology advances faster than people are able to understand it, and abstractions build on top of abstractions to the point where everything just seems like magic and nobody needs to concern themselves with how things actually work.

In fact, pretty much nobody writes code except droids. The droids are instructed on what to write by a programmer, who is usually some old gray wizard in a hooded robe that speaks about what needs to be created and how it should be done at a very high level, then the droids get to work. Nobody actually understands the code the droids produce, and trying to is mostly a waste of time since you can just tell a droid to rewrite it anyway. As a result, most UI is also built by droids. That's why it's more likely to resemble something like ncurses or maybe vim with a powerline plugin, rather than MacOS or Windows.

Because nobody actually understands technology, they tend to develop crude mental models about how things work, and you end up with people doing things the hard way just because they don't know there is any other way to do it. In fact, Star Wars probably wouldn't have even happened if the Empire had better IT security.

It's also likely that people in Star Wars don't understand the concept of one technology being more "advanced" than the other, as they have no skills to evaluate that. So you sometimes see better technology in older times and worse tech in newer times.

When you look at Star Wars this way, the world actually seems very futuristic, because it is the end result of thousands of generations of people who have come to accept technology as a magical black box where you simply give inputs and get outputs. We can even begin to see this effect in our own world today.

[Cyph0n]

I think your first paragraph is an apt description of our world, starting from the early 20th century and onwards.

[supermw]

Especially the 21st century and onwards.

[Cyph0n]

I'm not only talking about technology, but also critical infrastructure and transportation, both of which had breakthroughs in the 20th century with the development of cars and planes, as well as the development of AC transmission and the electric grid.

[krapp]

Far more people are writing code now than ever, though.

[krapp]

To be fair, Rogue One is a direct prequel to A New Hope, which was filmed in the 70s, so it has to maintain that aesthetic and has to contain the same anachronisms like "data tapes."

All of the Star Wars prequels (and the Star Trek series set before TOS) have the same problem, in that they have to present a "futuristic" universe that's acceptably so to modern audiences, yet maintain a sense of visual continuity as antecedents to shows or movies whose look was set in stone decades ago.

Also, you have to consider that Rogue One is an action movie, it's grand, swashbuckling Buck Rogers style space opera. You can't start with a thrilling orbital dogfight, then have close quarters urban combat, then... sitting at a terminal making database queries or something. It might be more realistic but it would also ruin the tone and pacing of the film.

[SCAQTony]

Star Wars is a mess for the past has tech more advanced than the future. Blade Runner is still watchable though and never laughable because it seemingly has been placed in an intentional anachronistic SciFi setting: the 1940's hairstyle and dress Rachel wears, a 1950's "Raymond Chandler" slice of life story, a computer that is more "steampunk" than plausible. The films "Brazil", Marie Antoinette", "Titus", Jesus Christ Superstar, adopt that anachronistic style as well.

[Finnucane]

Star Wars: A long time ago in a galaxy far away. Why would you assume their tech progress is the same as ours?

[umvi]

Indeed, computers in that universe seem to be both extremely mature and immature. Mature enough for sentient, highly specialized (and general) AI surpassing human ability. But so immature that the "targeting computer" for a state-of-the-art fighter is a crappy norton bombsight-esque augmented reality screen. Advanced enough to store/sort/route navigational data for any 2 points in the galaxy. But so underdeveloped that architectural blueprints are best stored and moved around on physical media. Advanced enough to automate intergalactic cargo/freight/etc. But so underdeveloped that humans need to operate WW2-style plexigalss ball turrets in order to target/shoot down TIE fighters.

It's what happens when you lock retro-futurism into the franchise's canon.