Technological progression

[Jon]

On another non-sci fi forum I visit, in an off topic thread about Star Trek, someone posted a tired old comment which basically amounted to 'Star Trek uses gadgets that are acutally plausible, not pure fantasy, therefore, wins by default' and after a little bit of back and forth between us the poster maintained that Star Trek offers a 'far higher degree of scientific plausibility than Star Wars', then threw in the 'empire was beaten by furry little creatures argument for good measure .To top it off he stated that Star Wars belongs in a 'Sci-fi-fantasy' camp while Star Trek is more 'Hard Sci-fi' which gave me a laugh. I referred to Psionics, Telepaths, Baryon sweeps, cracks in the event horizon, hyper-evolution, sonic space waves and god-like beings etc in retort but eh, you know how stubborn they can be.

It did get me thinking though, and since I'm not at all familiar with the EU of Star Wars, though have seen the whole movie saga numerous times, has the Star Wars galaxy been technologically stagnant in some areas for millenia? Did exponential growth of technology stop in the Star Wars universe, is there any exploration of why a technological singularity didn't happen, was AI stimmied and controlled rigourously, etc? Obviously the weaponary and power generation capabilities are enormous by the time the Death Stars are deployed, but could they have been constructed centuries before, is there an obvious technological progression from KOTOR through to ROTJ, for instance? When I look to Star Trek, this argument can be somewhat rebuked at them- Humanity is put up on this pedestal and somehow practically every race surrounding Earth has been in space for millenia by the time Cochrane takes his flight but aren't necessarily much more advanced than the humans end up- and Star Trek portrays all of the advances Starfleet uses, such as the transporter, the warp drive and ship aesthetics as human innovations- so one could argue the Star Trek universe shows significant stagnation (indeed what massive technological leaps were made between 2250 and 2380... Holodecks?)

But yeah, is there any material/an existing thread relating to the technological development of the Wars universe in the time between the old republic and the empire available?

[Bounty]

Humanity is put up on this pedestal and somehow practically every race surrounding Earth has been in space for millenia by the time Cochrane takes his flight but aren't necessarily much more advanced than the humans end up-

They maintain their lead for more than a century after Cochrane's flight, though; human-built vessels in the 2150's are still vastly behind the curve. It's not until the founding of the Federation proper - and presumably, access for human engineers to the technological know-how of the other founding races - that humans reach rough parity.

Star Trek portrays all of the advances Starfleet uses, such as the transporter, the warp drive and ship aesthetics as human innovations

It suggests they are, but they were simply separate developments of technology that had been known to other races for far longer. Warp drive, for instance, is a field where humans initially lag so far behind on other races that a wf 5 engine - what contemporary Vulcans consider pedestrian - is seen as a huge achievement.

indeed what massive technological leaps were made between 2250 and 2380... Holodecks?

In terms of fundamental developments, not much. In terms of refinement of the existing technology, it depends what weight you give to background that is shown but not made explicit - the 2271 introduction of vastly improved warp propulsion, the leaps in computing during the early 2360's, smaller projects such a galaxy-wide communication, genetic engineering or stellar reignition.

[Darth Hoth]

It did get me thinking though, and since I'm not at all familiar with the EU of Star Wars, though have seen the whole movie saga numerous times, has the Star Wars galaxy been technologically stagnant in some areas for millenia?

On the whole, yes (there are some mentions of fusion warheads being the latest weapons around in the KotOR era, but those tend to be mostly ignored, and hyperdrive, power generation and so on have seen but little refinement since). There is some continuous developments of various mechanisms (such as shield penetrators and counter-measures), but the basics are fairly much set.

Did exponential growth of technology stop in the Star Wars universe, is there any exploration of why a technological singularity didn't happen, was AI stimmied and controlled rigourously, etc?

The Empire is mentioned as having quantum computers in Death Star, and there are other examples of massive data processing capabilities in films and canon (analysis of Death Star plans within hours, some specs on the Imperial Center computer from the X-wing books - one occasion of them not being horribly minimalist). Human-equivalent or above AI is around. Apparently cyber-singularity does not work in the galaxy.

[Darth Wong]

People should not interpret technological stagnation as proof of weakness. It could be that they've discovered all of physics, and there is simply no more physics to learn.

Rapid technological progression cannot continue forever. Rate of technological progression is a foolish way to assess the strength of a civilization; the British Empire in the 19th century was progressing at an incredible rate, literally inventing Newtonian physics, mechanized travel, industrialization, and electronic communication within a single lifetime: each of which are enormously important society-changing innovations. That doesn't mean they could fight modern China.

[montypython]

People should not interpret technological stagnation as proof of weakness. It could be that they've discovered all of physics, and there is simply no more physics to learn.

Rapid technological progression cannot continue forever. Rate of technological progression is a foolish way to assess the strength of a civilization; the British Empire in the 19th century was progressing at an incredible rate, literally inventing Newtonian physics, mechanized travel, industrialization, and electronic communication within a single lifetime: each of which are enormously important society-changing innovations. That doesn't mean they could fight modern China.

I've seen this brainbug in many stories and fanfics too, especially B5 ones where the Vorlons and Shadows are presented as being useless for being technologically stagnant, even though they are already among the top tier powers. Trek does it even worse with the Q, both in novelizations and Voyager episodes.

[bz249]

People should not interpret technological stagnation as proof of weakness. It could be that they've discovered all of physics, and there is simply no more physics to learn.

Rapid technological progression cannot continue forever. Rate of technological progression is a foolish way to assess the strength of a civilization; the British Empire in the 19th century was progressing at an incredible rate, literally inventing Newtonian physics, mechanized travel, industrialization, and electronic communication within a single lifetime: each of which are enormously important society-changing innovations. That doesn't mean they could fight modern China.

Also there are applicational developments in SW, the TIE Interceptor is more than a match for an earlier TIE Fighter (or an ISD Mark I is a toast against a Mark II) sure both of them use the same principles... but in this respect current day Earth is in tech stagnation period, cars still use internal combustion (as in 1900) and computers are based on semiconductors (just as in 1970).

[Batman]

People should not interpret technological stagnation as proof of weakness. It could be that they've discovered all of physics, and there is simply no more physics to learn.
Rapid technological progression cannot continue forever. Rate of technological progression is a foolish way to assess the strength of a civilization; the British Empire in the 19th century was progressing at an incredible rate, literally inventing Newtonian physics, mechanized travel, industrialization, and electronic communication within a single lifetime: each of which are enormously important society-changing innovations. That doesn't mean they could fight modern China.

I've seen this brainbug in many stories and fanfics too, especially B5 ones where the Vorlons and Shadows are presented as being useless for being technologically stagnant, even though they are already among the top tier powers. Trek does it even worse with the Q, both in novelizations and Voyager episodes.

While both Picard and Janeway would likely agree the Q ARE useless (dubious as Janeway's judgement may be in general) that doesn't make them powerless. Wether or not they're technologically stagnant or not they can still do things the AQ races of the era can't begin to dream of.
Same for B5. The only reason the Vorlons/Shadows bothered with the Younger Races to begin with was to make a point in the mother of all Vs debates. They didn't fight to win the war, they fought to get the other side to CONCEDE THE DEBATE. Heck the Younger Races needed 3:1 odds to take on HELPLESS battlecrabs.
Who CARES if they are technologically stagnant? They STILL kick YR ass despite using inherently inferior technology (sorry, the Vorlons/Shadows were superior to the YR DESPITE using biotech, not because of it They still kicked YR ass because of a several billion year head start).

[Batman]

People should not interpret technological stagnation as proof of weakness. It could be that they've discovered all of physics, and there is simply no more physics to learn.
Rapid technological progression cannot continue forever. Rate of technological progression is a foolish way to assess the strength of a civilization; the British Empire in the 19th century was progressing at an incredible rate, literally inventing Newtonian physics, mechanized travel, industrialization, and electronic communication within a single lifetime: each of which are enormously important society-changing innovations. That doesn't mean they could fight modern China.

Also there are applicational developments in SW, the TIE Interceptor is more than a match for an earlier TIE Fighter (or an ISD Mark I is a toast against a Mark II) sure both of them use the same principles... but in this respect current day Earth is in tech stagnation period, cars still use internal combustion (as in 1900) and computers are based on semiconductors (just as in 1970).

Um-there's a HELL of a lot more difference between a Model T and a modern car than there is between a basic TIE and an Interceptor.Or sticking with the fighter anology, between a Sopwith Camel and a Rafale. What we see of technological change in the post-Clone Wars era may very well be due to changed operational requirements, not actual technological advances.

[Connor MacLeod]

People should not interpret technological stagnation as proof of weakness. It could be that they've discovered all of physics, and there is simply no more physics to learn.

Rapid technological progression cannot continue forever. Rate of technological progression is a foolish way to assess the strength of a civilization; the British Empire in the 19th century was progressing at an incredible rate, literally inventing Newtonian physics, mechanized travel, industrialization, and electronic communication within a single lifetime: each of which are enormously important society-changing innovations. That doesn't mean they could fight modern China.

It could also quite simply be there is no motivation for technological improvement either. R&D does cost time, money, and effort and the returns you get on it are not neccesarily predictable or linear. It could also be quite complicated - just because you amke a discovery does not neccesarily mean it oculd be implemented. A universe with slow or nonexistent technologiacal progression may simply have no need for further development, and better uses for the resources elsewhere.
It might take something big (like a war) to spur any real development.

Much of the same logic can be applied to activities like exploration, I imagine.

[Connor MacLeod]

I just remembered, we have the Death Star as a prime example of technological progression in SW, and they extended that with the DS2, but that it also had a "reason" (Palpy wanted a WMD to use to terrify people) for its building and to justify the R&D and engineering as well as the construction. You could argue this could mean they could build entire fleets of DS's (thousands or more) but they really have no reason to do so. Alot of the EU-dervied "advances' you could think of are simply driven by military needs too.

And even then I dislike the idea that advances need be "massive' much less "exponential" or that they are all innovations or inventions. Things could be refinements of existng tech (making it bigger or smaller) or improving effiiecny, durability, endurance, etc. rather than building something new. And alot of the "developments" may or may not carry tradeoffs of some kind (how often do you hear about tradeoffs, anyhow?)

Lastly, I woudl also submit that rampant technological progression is not neccesarily a good thing in all respects, as technologicla stagnation could serve as a means of control (or at least, preventing your civilization from destroying itself outright - STar Wars almost certainly has to do tht to some degree otherwise anyone would build a planet killer) And rampant technological progression is harder to control or contain than slower/nonexistent development.

[Simon_Jester]

When I look to Star Trek, this argument can be somewhat rebuked at them- Humanity is put up on this pedestal and somehow practically every race surrounding Earth has been in space for millenia by the time Cochrane takes his flight but aren't necessarily much more advanced than the humans end up- and Star Trek portrays all of the advances Starfleet uses, such as the transporter, the warp drive and ship aesthetics as human innovations- so one could argue the Star Trek universe shows significant stagnation (indeed what massive technological leaps were made between 2250 and 2380... Holodecks?)

The biggest one I can think of was the replicator. Replicators appear to be able to create matter ex nihilo using large amounts of energy, or at the very least to transmute elements casually. They're one of the few Star Trek technologies that might credibly be impressive in a Star Wars context. They revolutionized industry and military logistics. And (we can infer) they triggered a revolutionary social change within the Federation.

So yes, there is definite evidence for technological advance over century-sized time scales in Star Trek. Even more so if you regard the Enterprise prequel series as canon, where a lot of the stuff taken for granted in the other movies is seen in prototype form.
____

But yeah, is there any material/an existing thread relating to the technological development of the Wars universe in the time between the old republic and the empire available?

My impression is that most of the technological change was in the form of engineering. That is, the round of wars kicked off by Palpatine's efforts to take over the Galactic Republic drove people to develop advanced weapons befitting a Kardashev Type II civilization. So we saw a lot of incremental improvements in existing weapon designs, and the construction of some really big weapons that no one would have been willing to pay for if there wasn't a galactic war on.

But I don't think we saw much evidence of advances in the basic sciences- possibly, as Darth Wong says, because they've honestly run out of new science to advance into.

It does seem like development of AI in Star Wars has been blocked; we see human-level AI but not the kind of superhuman "strong AI" that makes the technological singularity plausible. This may be because of intrinsic limits on AI in Star Wars, but that strikes me as unlikely; if I can build a computer the size of a droid's head with human-level intelligence, I ought to be able to build a computer the size of a Volkswagen with godlike intelligence compared to any human. I think it's more likely that there is a strong moratorium on research into super-sentient AIs, because nobody really wants to find out what happens when the computers are powerful enough to render meat-based minds obsolete. I also think that the same cultural impulse explains why droids are treated as second-class citizens (at best) in much of the Star Wars galaxy.

[Ghost Rider]

...*sigh*

Just locking because really the ground here has been tread, and at least when the topic was new, it might have tried other opinions.