RicOlie_2 said:

PT technology should have looked less advanced than OT technology. The SE should have given us more advanced displays like Adywan did so that they would be able to use slightly more advanced technology, but it should not have been more advanced than the OT's tech.

Here I disagree. The events of the OT happened in the frontier. The worlds and the living conditions represented either poor material wealth of inhabitants of these worlds or unexplored areas of the galaxy. The technologies that we saw in the OT can be interpreted as purely unimaginative and functional serving just as means to survive. On a greater scale I think the idea behind such visual tech style of the OT was simply to show mechanical nature of Empire (simple triangular-shaped giant but elephantine warships of unvaried design) against the poverty-struck background of the human existence during the time of oppression. Though I think if Lucas had more sophisticated technology in 1977 he would show us more advanced stuff of Coruscant and the like.

As for pre-Empire era, the intention was obviously to show more prospering society of higher cultural, technical level of development with more elegant and civilized elements of the technical craft far surpassing the dark and poverty of the Imperial rule. In contrast to the frontier life in Outer Rim it would be nice and logical to see civilization at its height, to see the capital of the Republic etc, super high-end facilities of bygone age of agricultural and industrial growth (of the civil industry). None other than ROTJ (kill me, but I LOVE the movie!!) director Richard Marquand who was privy to some drafts of Lucas' outline for his prequels as seen back in circa 1983 commented that these stories were about different times, different technology, different sentiments, different people than that we were introduced in the OT. It was not the visual style but the story composition, plot twists, characterization and the scripts that ruined the PT!