Much has been made of how Star Wars, being a fantasy set in space, does not bother with realistic depictions of technology.
I would dispute that claim, pointing out that the technology we use is not merely a matter of what has been invented, but also the human elements that control what we use in our daily lives.
Also, the Star Wars universe is full of dummies.
There are tons of things we all use, despite there being better alternatives. Let's face it, the fact that electric cars have faced such an uphill climb is not simply a matter of inadequate batteries. Electric cars would be devastating to several industries, and those people (rightly so,) have struggled to suppress the usage of the technology, and we ourselves do not trust such innovations, because we are so accustomed to the internal combustion engine ("you mean I can't shake windows when I rev my car? people migh tthink I'm gay!")
Whereas cell phones were immediately popular, and new industries popped up over night to capitalize on this new tech. It spread like a virus, and people scrambled to make the tech better and cheaper to get it into as many hands as possible.
Likewise, in Star Wars, we see the people of Tatooine, the backwater of the galaxy, using second-, third- or more hand technology, battered and repaired. Everything is held together with duct tape and baling wire, such as the mismatched parts of the Millennium Falcon, or C-3P0's off color leg. (this by the way, is the obvious reason why Artoo can no longer fly in the classic trilogy. With no one to keep fixing his various systems, none of his fancier bits work anymore.)
The Empire has top of the line military hardware, clearly designed for efficiency and intimidation. THe Rebellion has beat up old fighters like the Y-wing, which are missing their outer fairings, leaving exposed wires and bits.
On the subject of Imperial technology, why on Earth (or Coruscant,) would the Empire bother to use walkers like the AT-AT? Simple. They are made by a company that has a lot of friends in the Imperial Military's procurement division. Try Googling the V-22 Osprey some time, and then come back and tell me how the military would never choose inferior machinery.
And then there'e the issue of cost. If the AT-AT is economical, and the people who make these decisions can use that to their advantage, you bet your ass that troopers are going to be clanking along in a walker while the civilian who ordered them gets a shiny new speeder for his wife.
And if stormtrooper armor does interfere with eripheral vision? Tough. The Emperor wants to maintain the image here, and if some of you bastards get ambushed, so what? Human lives are literally the cheapest resource at his disposal (try to salvage the armor and that E-11 blaster though, that stuff is still worth a buck once you wash the smell of dead stormtrooper out of it.)
Then there is the terminology. In our own world, we hold on to words, adapting them to fit newer tech by just slapping them on the next new thing. We still say 'dialing' a phone for example, even though we tap a touchscreen now. Likewise, we say "my phone's ringing," instead of "my phone is playing Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance,' I should answer it."
That is why you get terms like 'turbolasers' to refer to the large blaster cannons on Imperial ships. They are clearly not lasers (plasma weapons, duh,) but hundreds of years prior maybe they were. We still call the artillery aboard modern aircraft carriers 'cannons,' even though they are nothing like the primitive weapons that bore that name originally.
If our soldiers begin carrying railguns or lasers, we sill still call them 'rifles' if they hold them to their shoulders to fire. Neither will have barrels with spiral grooves in them to impart spin to a metal projectile, but the term 'rifle' has simply become synonymous with long arms. The Death Star's planet-cracking weapon is called a 'Superlaser,' but it is entirely probable that that was just the name the designer (Wallex Blissex) came up with to explain it to the dummies he worked with. You know, just like life.
Speaking of dummies, it's time to talk about Han Solo. Han is a hero, don;t get me wrong, and of course I love him just like the rest of you. But for all his prowess at piloting spacecraft, Han is no rocket scientist.
He doesn't need to be, he just flies the things, and fixes them when they break. He doesn't care about the science behind how it all works, just the practical applications. So it's natural that sometimes he might get confused about some of the terminology.
You see where this is going, right?
A parsec is a measure of distance in space, and it is a large unit of measurement. Really large. So in the original, 1977 Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope,) when Han brags about his ship's speed by claiming it made the 'Kessel Run' in less than twelve parsecs, he was clearly mistaken. Because he's a dumb, lovable goofball, and he was talking to a couple of dumb hicks, so it's not like he was putting on his A game.
And that's fine. You don't need to come up with some lame-ass convoluted explanation about Kessel being surrounded by black holes so that you have to be fast to make it within a particular distance or some shit like that.
Sigh.
Anyways, my point is that before you pick apart something in SciFi for being illogical (like all those jackasses who thought the name 'unobtanium' in Avatar was stupid,) look around at our own world, from which the writers draw their inspiration.
In a world where we name new species after everyone from gary Larson to Han Solo (it's true, look it up,) it would be ridiculous to think that scientists would suddenly stop having lame senses of humor.
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