The Rebel Faction

Technological Stasis

Technological Stasis
Some observers of STAR WARS seem troubled by the issue of technological stasis in this fictional universe. Many readers have difficulty with this idea, because they wrongly take modern Western technological society as a point of reference for the STAR WARS environment. There are good physical reasons why a culture in a closed environment (be it bound to its home planet or bound to a particular galaxy) will eventually reach the limits of its resources and then either adopt a stable state or perish. History shows that most societies relax to a stable state when they run out of possibilities for territorial expansion etc. Also, there is bound to come a time when scientific discovery meets all of the needs of its society. This is not a bad condition, and it can be easily and convincingly argued that this is the natural state of humankind.

Objectively, the galaxy cannot have experienced major technological change at any time in recent millennia. The whole galaxy was governed in essentially the same way for over a thousand generations. The occurrence of vast periods of political stasis requires stasis in all of the fields of life that can affect politics. If any change of technology had been sustained and accumulated, it would have eventually altered the dynamics of the civilisation to the point where pre-existing institutions such as the Galactic Republic (and perhaps even the Jedi) would have been rendered irrelevent.

On a storytelling level, George Lucas did not set out to tell a tale about machines and technical developments. His stories are intended to be more eternal than the hundreds of factory-produced TV SF shows where the plot depends on the provision of some kind of novelty device.

None of the spin-off novels, comics or games published to date shows any empirical evidence of technological progress in the mainstream galactic society of the STAR WARS universe. On the fringes of the civilisation there are some exotic non-human societies that are experiencing technological change while they are adjusting towards a different status within or outside the supra-civilisation, by either ascending from a primitive state or else falling into decadence. However these isolated exceptions are not part of the technical mainstream. The only variations of galactic technology are due to either:


cyclic variations of fashion, as needs and preferences change so as to favour one kind of device over another, to accomplish the same task (eg. the use of hyperspace beacons in a peaceful era vs the autonomy of individual ships' navicomputers in unstable centuries);

changes of scale (eg. the Death Star, which is not fundamentally different from ancient blaster weapons, and which is only remarkable as an expression of concentrated political willpower in a militaristic regime).
There are no more "advanced" technologies, starships or products in the mainstream STAR WARS universe (excepting pre-interstellar primitive societies and fringe groups that are isolated from the galactic community). It appears to be simply a matter of balancing technical tradeoffs of competing items in a strategic environment that oscillates sluggishly about a mean galactic level over the centuries. In some eras, a highly capable device is developed and manufactured, and its makers may consider it incrementally superior. In a different generation, those capabilities would be downplayed and atrophied as other requirements come to the fore. Elegance of design or economy of manufacture are examples of utilitarian values that sometimes take precedence over attributes such as speed or firepower. Lucafilm designers for Episode I have stated versions of this principle in numerous printed interviews, especially with regard to the technical aesthetics of the Naboo culture.



Thanks to the people at theforce.net for that delightful commentary. It can be found... here