The thing to remember is that the Republic and the Empire is vast and has thousands of developed worlds on it. Can you imagine the effort it would take to get data/computer standards in place?

Why isn't Wifi commonplace?

It might be but it's a different standard to the one you use so might as well not exist. Just look at how some American mobile phones won't work in Europe because they use a different radio standard. Multiply this over a thousand worlds and droids talking basic to each other or flicking a switch makes things much easier. Not a bad explanation and just as realistic as hyperspace, laser swords or dilithium.

Star Wars tech is static because it is very mature and it is more a case of repackaging what is available and not making any new breakthroughs.

Plus it's pulp space fantasy and if your players have issues with this then they should be playing Eclipse Phase or similar and not Star Wars

When questioned about tech and tech levels in Star Wars, I explain like this: George Lucas loves pulps, and Star Wars isn't sci-fi.

The action and adventure that you find in the pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s, especially in the sci-fi ones like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, are the underlying tropes of Star Wars. Action and adventure make the story, not the gadgets and gizmos. The tech level that Lucas presented to us in the setting is very much like what you would have seen in the 30s and 40s. It is dieselpunk, if you like that term, which I do. Look at the aesthetics: star destroyers look like WW2 battleships, most of the blasters you see are based off of early to mid 20th century firearms, the sounds starships make are like rumbly rat rods. Star Wars tech is 30s and 40s sci-fi pulp tech for the most part, mixed in with some 70s computer tech to bridge certain gaps in the plots.

The pulps are full of action and adventure. There's no action in hacking into the Deathstar's mainframe from the server room on the Falcon to disable the tractor beam. The action was sneaking into the super, nigh-impregnable depths of the enemy castle and manually throwing the switch.

The pulp magazines featured tales of fighting giant and/or crazy beasts - scenes like fighting a rancor in a dungeon, or narrowly escaping the closing mouth of a giant effing space worm, or wrestling a whatever-the-Heck creature in a trash compactor. Swords! Pulp action loves a good sword fight. Early concepts had all stormtroopers using lightsabers. Magic! There has to be powers/abilities beyond ken. At the very least, there has to be some kind of cultists who believe they have magic.

I think a lot of people understand Star Wars to be sci-fi and therefore it has to be super futuristic and "well, if we have wi-fi and the Internet, Star Wars must have something even more futurtastic..." Star Wars is not sci-fi; it is pulp, retro-futuristic dieselpunk, sci-fantasy.

Quite likely one of the best comparisons I have seen. Well said and very appropriate. It's also a better underpinning than saying "cinematic" for how the action feels. Cinematic is true, but pulp action adventure in a space opera is better headspace for me. Thank you.

The way you’re using the word “analog” implies that you don’t know what that word really means.

Based on the rest of what you wrote, I would say that what you’re looking for here is a universe where things are disconnected by default, even to the point of being air-gapped — by default.

The modern world we know is becoming more and more connected by default, which effectively means insecure by default because no one can be bothered to put proper security into those systems to compensate for the fact that everything is becoming connected by default.

You could also think of it as “default secure”, as opposed to “default connected”.

But none of that has anything to do with the word “analog”.

Thanks Bradknowles, I wrote my post after returning from a night of drinking with friends and didn't separate the comment in quotes from the rest of my spiel so it looks like there are meant to be together. Mi Culpa on the analogue thing it was the first sentence of our discussion that lead to the rest.

In any case you are correct for the rest of it. I do believe that, as well as the time SW was written and the other arguments mentioned including the Pulp analogy, that default disconnected is inevitable and makes perfect sense as we see it in the SW Universe. So all of the computational machinery (Droids, ship and station computers, "physical" digital data storage, even the reliance on seemingly analogue communicators and the unconnected Holonet make perfect sense when you consider the necessity to protect against intrusion. Software is relatively easy to hack whereas hard coded, discrete systems are much less vulnerable. After 10's of thousands of years we could expect everything to require a physical connection and/or require an intermediary communication system to act as a "firewall" to intrusion.

And if you really want to get on the bad side of the Empire, find out that you are a Force-Sensitive Technomancer (Otaku if you prefer)! Streams of data from hardcoded discrete systems scrolling by as a playground. Just hope you didn't grow up on Coruscant or you'll just wish you were Summer Glau... (does that mix enough systems together in a blender?)