I don’t know how old the Holonet is in Star Wars Legends or Canon but I am intrigued with it possibly being ancient and social scientists studying it. Perhaps digging through centuries of information to do a little bit of sociology studying how people lived 100’s of years ago but I don’t know. Could someone access the old Holonet? What could be done to see the first Holonet transmission?

Holonet: Canon / Legends . It is indeed several thousand years old, but not prehistoric.

13 hours ago, Leia Hourglass said:

I don’t know how old the Holonet is in Star Wars Legends or Canon but I am intrigued with it possibly being ancient and social scientists studying it. Perhaps digging through centuries of information to do a little bit of sociology studying how people lived 100’s of years ago but I don’t know. Could someone access the old Holonet? What could be done to see the first Holonet transmission?

I don't think that the HoloNet works like the internet where lots of information is stored on servers to be accessed at any time. I see more of it being stored in hard containers (tapes, hard drives, cartridges, etc.) and manually made available when a broadcast is being made (and it can then be recorded on the receiving end). In short, it's a medium for broadcasting the news (and entertainment) between the stars, but it works much more like 1970s broadcast television than modern internet.

While I agree, it's usually better to keep the Holonet as more limited to what the 70's could comprehend, that is more a communication system than a computer information network. It doesn't store data, or at least not longer than required to move it through the system. But...you can work with it to make it interesting.

I could see an instance where an old Holonet relay thought lost to stellar phenomena suddenly starts broadcasting a service request. It's been out of the net for centuries, and it's still got tons of data in it's buffer. Since the Holonet doesn't store data for long term, typically wiping upon receipt, it's buffers represent a wealth of first hand information from the year it went offline.

I think we also got to consider that the rules have a holonet relay as 75000 credits, as expensive as a lot of ships. It's unlikely the average person would have access to this kind of funds.

10 hours ago, MrTInce said:

I think we also got to consider that the rules have a holonet relay as 75000 credits, as expensive as a lot of ships. It's unlikely the average person would have access to this kind of funds.

...or would need it. If you dumb the Holonet down to 1977 standards and focus on it's primary function, Live extreme range holo communications... Well I like my great grandma on Kal'Shebbol just fine... but she can just get subnet text dumps for single digit credits. If I really want to see her I can just rent an hour in a holo-booth at EmpEx for Life Day for less than the cost of a lobster dinner...

Mostly our GMs just decide from time to time, what the HoloNet needs to be in the actual session. Also we rule, that many planets have a local network with public access terminals where characters can find streetmaps, shops or some other superficial information.

But yes, it is definitely not the internet.