In the Star Wars galaxy, the Hyperdrive was invented 25,000 years before the start of the movies. Achieving FTL travel ushered in a new age of trade and development, but then 25,000 years later; nothing much else has changed. Sure they refine certain sciences but their aren't any paradigm changing breakthroughs. I refuse to accept that. Stiegler said technology never stops evolving and I believe him. As long as their are people; their will be advancements. Sure their are periods of plateauing out like us in the last 50 years but their are always bubbles of expansion for as long as their is civilization.

What do you think the next breakthrough will be? It can't be teleportation or time travel because those 2 abilities have been fantasized about by sentient beings since the beginning of time. They had 25,000 years to try and achieve it and it's absense leads me to believe it just isn't possible.

Here on Earth; we NEVER came close to seeing how much the internet would change society. It was a total shock just like the Hyperdrive was a total shock for the Star Wars citizens.

What would be the next "shock" in the Star Wars galaxy that could usher in a new age?

Normally I'd say A.I., but judging by the tethers they keep on droids I think they already had their Skynet moment in prehistory.

Miniaturization to nanomachines is the only tech they don't have, as far as I'm aware.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1106303Normally I'd say A.I., but judging by the tethers they keep on droids I think they already had their Skynet moment in prehistory.

Miniaturization to nanomachines is the only tech they don't have, as far as I'm aware.

They did that. But it's a good suggestion!

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/NM-K_reconstitutor

If anything, Star Wars tech appears to be regressing as each new Death Star seems easier to blow up than the last one.

Also, the surprise appearance of a clone army seems to tell us that much of known science isn't universal. Otherwise, clone armies should be a normal part of the military. Of course, none of the clones in the movie appeared 1/10th as competent as Jango Fett, let alone Boba. So perhaps clone science is a mess too.

We tend to think of technology as a commodity, and the cutting edge of science as an ever-moving line, but I don't think that analogy works in Star Wars. In that galaxy far, far away, science is an art. There are some basic technologies that are all over the place, but the really exquisite or cutting-edge examples aren't next year's throw-aways. They're eternal masterpieces, wonders of craft and design. This applies to the Millennium Falcon, the cloning technology that produced all those Fetts, and so on.

Quote from: Maximum7;1106302What would be the next "shock" in the Star Wars galaxy that could usher in a new age?

Sex droids. No, really...

This one is really easy to explain.

Why hasnt tech advanced more?

3 reasons.

1: You have massive interstellar wars that often totally devastate civilizations happening fairly often.

2: Not everyone is sharing and those that are are sharing over a really large swath of space. Tech advancements are going to spread out from these points. Then there is cost. The further out you get the lower the tech sometimes gets. Often due to cost issues of either purchasing this stuff or maintaining it. And that is another problem people forget. Tech can be brutally hard to repair and advancement is not allways a good thing.

3: The Force. No really. You have a galaxy encompassing entity that can and will nudge things the way it wants them and obviously it does not want tech, especially war tech to reach the Lensman Escalation Threshold. Add to that the not so little fact that single beings or groups can blanket the galaxy with their will and things make even more sense as to why tech isnt advancing.

Quote from: Maximum7;1106302What would be the next "shock" in the Star Wars galaxy that could usher in a new age?

Star Trek style replicator and transporter technology turns the galaxy into a post-singularity setting, and it doesn't feel like Star Wars anymore.

That's really the problem with advancing tech in Star Wars. What breakthroughs could they have without borking the setting? They can have "better" tech to accomplish the same things, like stronger shields and more powerful weapons to counter the stronger shields, etc, but once you introduce revolutionary tech, like say drone torpedoes that make pilots obsolete, then you have no more cool starfighter pilots and spaceship dogfights. For an example.

Even if technology doesn't stop advancing, there's nothing indicating that people will create and adopt specific technologies - even things that we think are universally useful, like the wheel, weren't used everywhere even though we know they had the technology.

To answer what technology might come next, we should probably ask what need should be fulfilled.  

The society seems happy to have people farming moisture on a desert planet (instead, of say, draining the swamps of Dagobah) so I think it's fair to say that there are organized forces trying to keep society exactly as it is.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1106324If anything, Star Wars tech appears to be regressing as each new Death Star seems easier to blow up than the last one.

Also, the surprise appearance of a clone army seems to tell us that much of known science isn't universal. Otherwise, clone armies should be a normal part of the military. Of course, none of the clones in the movie appeared 1/10th as competent as Jango Fett, let alone Boba. So perhaps clone science is a mess too.

Jango Fett might have been the perfect templete, but the Clones did not benefit from his training. Fett and the other instructors were skilled in small unit tactics, but at the company or battalion, hell at the brigade level, it was make it up as you go.

The Republic had nominally at peace for millennia, with PDF units and Jedi handling things like pirates and whatnot.

Nobody really knew how to run a war.

I think the real question is why hasn't tech declined more?

You just had a galaxy-wide war, why aren't we seeing a postwar depression while the galaxy rebuilds and reorganizes?

We saw a little of that on Jakku, but that was mostly alt-Tattooine.