{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "When Obi-Wan Kenobi wants to disable the tractor beam, he goes to find the tractor beam settings, which are a physical part of...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/166378853298/", "html": "<p><a href=\"https://argumate.tumblr.com/post/166378667489/when-obi-wan-kenobi-wants-to-disable-the-tractor\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">argumate</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>When Obi-Wan Kenobi wants to disable the tractor beam, he goes to find the tractor beam settings, which are a physical part of the Death Star (conveniently located above an abyss with no hand-rail) not a panel in some dialog box.</p>\n<p>When Jyn has to realign the antenna to transmit the plans, the controls for doing so are a physical part of the tower (conveniently located on a windswept gantry jutting out into space) and are specific to that task alone.</p>\n<p>Star Trek may have its tricorders and iPads, but Star Wars doesn\u2019t even have text messages! If you want to send a message, you record a hologram of yourself and give it to a droid to deliver to the recipient.</p>\n<p>Humanity has a hundred thousand years experience with carefully constructed special purpose tools, while general purpose software has only become a thing in our lifetimes; we still don\u2019t know how to integrate it with our mythmaking, and perhaps we never will.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The weird thing is the Force enables instantaneous long-distance communication (at least in the case of &ldquo;great disturbances&rdquo;) but no one&rsquo;s thought to turn the Jedi into a telegraph network</p><p>(like the incestuous &ldquo;gifted child&rdquo; psychics of Anne McCaffrey&rsquo;s &ldquo;Talent&rdquo; series)</p><p>The chain goes Ability &lt; Tactics &lt; Strategy &lt; Logistics &lt; Politics and it&rsquo;s a waste to deploy them as small unit forces (tactics) when they could be infrastructural backbone (logistics)</p>"}