warning] The worldbuilding ick The Foundation thread earlier reminded me that Asimov had regular newspapers existing thousands of years in the future in a galactic empire. When I saw that, I felt like a foid getting hit with the green bubble. 
But is this actually ridiculous? It doesn't feel dated to me that there's no internet. I don't think a civilian internet is an inevitable (or necessarily desirable) aspect of a technologically advanced society, and if I wrote an advanced civilization I might not include it at all. So what then? Maybe newspapers will exist in the future because people will want to have them. I don't fricking know. I'm fine with, say, humanoid ayylmaos, but if you described them, say, eating with forks, that would feel too "normal" to me.
Instead of trying to neurodivergentally reverse engineer a bunch of rules, let's just talk about our feefees. "The ick" is something small, subtle, and subjective. So I'm not talking about obvious gaffes, plot holes, or general laziness. Rather, what are seemingly insignificant little details that take you out of a setting? What do you think causes this to hit sometimes but not others?
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Related to what you've brought up, I kind of like sci-fi stories that give reasons for a certain technological aesthetic. The new Battlestar Galactica for example has intentionally dated and analog technology within the spaceships because the Cylon main antagonists can hack anything networked and computerized. There's a built in explanation for anything that seems too “dated” for an interstellar setting.
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Yeah I like this. I also think a past-like scenario can feel more realistic than a present-like one because it shows you're aware of the possible anachronism. For example, if I depict feudal lordship, strict gender roles, and no computers in the future a la Dune, I'm at least somewhat exploring whether things that seem like progress might just be temporary deviations that people could choose to reject. Whereas if I depicted a future closely resembling the present, that would seem like declaring the present as the end of history.
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