In fact, I wasn’t looking for a droid at all, but this morning, over a bowl of oatmeal, while staring out at the desert, a question came to mind.
What’s the difference between a “droid” and an “android”?
So, I looked it up and found my answer on Wikidiff. It is exactly what I thought. A droid is a robot. An android is a robot that resembles a human.
But where do the words come from? I found this interesting little tidbit on Today I Found Out, which is a pretty neat place in itself!
“The word “droid” is just an aphesis form of “android”, a word that’s been around since at least the 1700s. The first documented mention of “android” is in the Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopedia, “Albertus Magnus is recorded as having made a famous androides”. Android derives from the Greek ὰνδρο (andro-), meaning “man”, and the suffix -ειδῄς (-eides), meaning “form, likeness, appearance, or resemblance”; hence the definition of android being “automaton resembling a human being”.”
That also doesn’t surprise me, but the fact that Lucasfilm trademarked the word “droid” over thirty years after using it for the first time in the original Star Wars movie so that Verizon would have to pay them royalties…that I was unaware of. Makes me think not so highly of Lucasfilm.
But I digress.
Why was I thinking about droids and androids? Because I recently posted this picture I took while I was traveling.
When I saw how far the little droid had descended, it broke my heart. After all he’s done for the Resistance, all he’s been through, to be reduced to a trash can job at a Nevada State Park? We can do better than this, can’t we?
Then I got this comment on Instagram and I replied:
That’s when I started to think again. Why would C3PO think we wouldn’t recognize him with a red arm? His programming is amazingly complex. He is fluent in over 6 million forms of communication. But his perception of himself is that of a two-year old human child that hides his eyes and thinks you can’t see him or puts on a hat and thinks you won’t recognize him. Strange.