Happens all the time.
The computer you wrote your post on uses programming that was written in the 70s with the fancy stuff being tacked on.
The biggest example is music programs all being based on the MIDI which was written in the 80s.
Old Tech is around us everyday, we just never pay attention to it.

Also, in those kinds of environments, it always feels like technology moves slower. Old fashioned and bulletproof is valued over newfangled, untested, and fragile.
When I go to my mechanic, he still prints out my bill and my inspection on an old, filthy dot matrix printer with the paper with the holes on the side.
Still works for the situation. It's time tested technology. And it gets the job done no matter how dirty and grungy the environment is.
For every man who has ever lived, in this universe, there shines a star.
-Arthur C. Clarke

I agree, though I do like BttF it seems even more anachronistic to me than Outland. With Outland the lame tech seems completely fitting for an end-of-the-line crudhole where people's lives revolve around digging rocks out of the ground for consumers back on earth. It drives home the point that the only reason at all for anyone to be out there is to make money and get the heck out again as fast as possible.

Back to the Future (all of the movies) are just as "dated" as Outland, if not worse. I really don't get the affinity for BttF. The whole series plays like an NBC Friday Night movie special, a totally tame and predictable Sci-fi 80s flick in the same vein as My Science Project, Zapped, and Misfits of Science.

firefly is another 'western in space' with much of the tech kind of 'retro'.
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

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Firefly has nothing to do with this movie, or even this topic.

Think "Firefly".
"The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen."

Excellent answer.

The use of (then) present-day technology and cultural accoutrements was a deliberate choice of the filmmakers, visual rhetoric designed to ground 1981 audiences and draw them into the storyline. Name-brand running shoes, shotguns, whores, and french fries are still inextricable parts of our culture, so I guess Hyams & Co. got that part right. Having worked in environments where computers were common in 1981, I can definitely say 'Outland' presages the future in abandoning those awful ORANGE monochrome monitors in favour of green and blue. Ancient shotguns? These somehow avoid shooting holes in the station, suggesting the projectiles' velocities are being sharply reduced or perhaps even controlled. Forklift? Forget the forklift, what about that kitchen, with its open-air greasetoriums and industrial strength food mixers?
The purpose of this film was not to tell the future, it was to tell a story, set in a distant yet recognizeable future. To be fair, when technology is highlighted in the 'Back To The Future' films, it is simply to make fun of it. However, it should be noted that the not-too-distant future of Marty McFly seems to include, perhaps inextricably, name-brand running shoes, shotguns, whores, and french fries. Having recently viewed 'Outland' I can say that apart from some interesting technical oversights, I was only slightly distracted by the absence of iPhones and the Internet. But perhaps, like 80's theme bars, 'Jaws' films, and (to a great extent) skateboarding, they will be pretty much forgotten by the time we get to Io. We'll have to see.

Yeah, it's supposed to be the future but they're using ancient shotguns. Even the forklift was old fashioned.

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