Synthetic lifeforms complete with a full range of emotions typically built to serve a specific process. They are generally considered to be property rather than alive, and have their memories wiped to prevent them from having too much personality. Some owners may fit their droids with a restraining bolt to further control their autonomy. Droids are used for administration, piloting, repair, and security in the film.
A restraining bolt is a piece of hardware that sticks to the outside of a droid and allows the owner to forbid certain actions or remotely disable the droid. It can be pried off without damage to the droid, which frees that droid from it’s control.
The faster-than-light travel in Star Wars is achieved through jumping to hyperspace. All hyperspace equipped ships need an onboard computer or a droid to calculate the route because, as Han says in A New Hope, “Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?”.
Holograms in Star Wars are used to display information or receive media such as a video call. They appear to communicate at faster than light speed, since there is no lag when holoconfrencing with someone in another system. News and other programming is sent over the Empire-controlled Holonet, which seems more like a TV channel than our internet. Holograms can be traced back to their source with the right technology.
Synthetic lifeforms complete with a full range of emotions typically built to serve a specific process. They are generally considered to be property rather than alive, and have their memories wiped to prevent them from having too much personality. Some owners may fit their droids with a restraining bolt to further control their autonomy. Droids are used for administration, piloting, repair, and security in the film.
These are computerized impound boots that connect to a ship’s landing gear and weigh themselves down far more than the normal effects of gravity would. These locks require either engineering knowledge, slicing (hacking), or a set code to safely remove. They are employed to prevent the theft of ships or to keep them grounded.
The Star Wars universe has audio only communicators, though there is not much to indicate they are different from our own radios/cellphones. Scomp links are a universal device used to interface with a computer, similarly to how we have ports like Ethernet or USB to connect a variety of devices. Prosthetic limbs would seemingly require an onboard computer to function, but it is not specified whether or not they do. Additionally, the speeders shown in this film may have computers on board regulating things such as their height and speed, but this is not stated specifically.
The creators of Solo: A Star Wars Story are a father-duo, Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan as the writers and Ron Howard as the producer. Although the public image of the creation of this movie can be seen as a backstory of a beloved character, Han Solo, there are a few ideas that the writer, producer, and actors want to emphasize in the movie.
In an interview with producer Ron Howard, he describes how this movie shows Han’s internal conflict with wanting to be a “bad guy” or a criminal but also having a moral code (making him the “good guy”), which is why we see a lot of criminal acts [1]. As a result of wanting more criminal acts within the movie, we see how often and sometimes easy it is to bypass security, violate privacy, and steal property.
Additionally, L3-37 (known as L3) comes up in this interview, and Howard mentions how the writers loved Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s interpretation of the character [1]. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) even have on record that during an interview with Phoebe, “She decided to play L3-37 as a human in her audition…. The casting directors … liked her original interpretation of the character, and gave her the part” [2]. In this case her original interpretation was the humanification of L3. In an interview with the Kasdan writers, they even state that “There is an emotional core to her” [3] which not only shows how they humanize L3 by giving her emotions but also referring to L3 as “her”. To gain more of an insight into the intent of L3 as a sentient droid, we can look to Phoebe Waller-Bridge herself who becomes the character L3-37. Phoebe also humanizes L3 by referencing L3 as “her” but also by saying that L3 is a revolutionary “fighting for the rights of her people” [4]. Phoebe makes the expansion that even though L3 is supposed to be more sentient than other droids based on the movie, that all droids are considered to be a group, or a species even. Lastly,in another interview with Phoebe and Donald Glover (who plays Lando Calrissian, partner of L3), says that the relationship “felt very organic” and that Glover could understand fully why Lando preferred her company [5].
Wireless technology is more vulnerable to unauthorized access. Wireless networks are often targeted for cyber criminal activities because people fail to create passwords to protect their networks, leaving them vulnerable to attacks [1][2]. Additionally public networks in conjunction with bad actors can gain access to the information of those who connect to this network [1]. It can be significantly more difficult to secure a network when you have many devices to manage that are not necessarily connected by a wire [2]. Despite wireless connections being vulnerable to unauthorized access, many counter measures have been created to protect oneself from these attacks. There are many varieties of wireless communication security such as signal hiding, encryption, and authentication or network security such as anti-virus or anti-spyware, firewalls, and avoiding public networks whereas wired technology doesn't have as many counter measures [3]. However, cyber crime has been increasing over the last decade because the most common cyber attacks are wireless [4][5].
A 2011 study found that viewers of films portraying intelligent robots resulted in a more positive view of Artificial Intelligence in real life, regardless of whether or not the robots were the heroes or villains. Notably, one of the films participants were shown was the original Star Wars film [6]. The franchise this film is a part of has prominently featured droids from the beginning, and it is immensely popular. Disney’s 2016 quarterly reports attributed an 86% increase in entertainment media income and a 23% in consumer products income to the release of a one Star Wars film [7]. These figures show there is a great interest in the films and related media produced for the Star Wars franchise. With such attention from the viewers it could be concluded that the creation of the Star Wars franchise has caused many people to sympathize with droids within, and thus have a more positive view of real-world AI.