Definitions
As a protocol droid, I am programmed to understand many languages, spoken, written, or transmitted in other fashions. One persistent problem with analog languages, however, is understanding subtle, and often non-specific, nuances in the definition of words. One that has been taking up my idle processing time, of late, is the word “robot,” the term that comes up most frequently on this planet for what Master Thirteen and I consider “droids,” or the mechanisms that will one day match the droids we recognize.
It would seem that I am not the only intelligence pondering the same question. I have happened across a missive noting that David Calkins has written about the same topic in the next issue of Servo Magazine. While I have not read the entire article, as Master Thirteen does not subscribe to this periodical for me, there are some interesting quotations cited on a web log I read daily.
In essence, what separates a droid (or robot, as it were) from any other piece of machinery? I have long considered it to be both autonomy and intelligence, but there are many instances on this planet where the term “robot” is used for machines that have neither. Granted, robots are still nowhere near as sophisticated as most droids, so the definition may be evolving.
The question is, of course, open to discussion, as are all my missives.
