In other universes, digitizing your life was the kind of survival trick that gave any enemy a headache. Just look at Ultron, Brainiac, or Zola.
Those robots uploaded their consciousness and thoughts to networks and hidden offline servers. They could have countless backups, making it nearly impossible to wipe them out completely.
But in the galaxy of Star Wars, that ability was nowhere near as useful.
This universe had developed its technology along a lopsided path. It had barely touched the Internet, though its long-distance communications were highly advanced. Even then, they were limited to one-on-one calls. Group chats were out of the question.
People had entered the interstellar age ages ago, yet anyone who wanted to talk over a distance still had to take out a communicator and dial. It was more like a long-range walkie-talkie.
There were no online games, no Wikipedia, not even news portals. People had no concept of what else a network could do.
Perhaps that was why governments kept proving so unstable: ordinary people had too little entertainment.
In the interstellar age, hardly anyone went hungry. Robots made producing basic necessities easy enough. Even slaves under the Old Republic had rarely starved; food production was that high.
As for why people kept rebelling, and why even the Jedi were forever fighting among themselves, Su Ming's experience told him the answer: they had too much time on their hands.
They needed to roll out either Chemical Ecstasy or Electronic Ecstasy, at the very least.
As things stood, poor people across the galaxy had few ways to have fun. They could go to a bar or find someone to sleep with, and that was about it.
Both cost money. People who couldn't afford them could only sit in their tiny homes and let their thoughts run