“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, written by Phillip K Dick, is more commonly known as “Blade Runner”, the film it became. The androids of Dick’s title were renamed replicants in the film. A source of constant speculation, there is no easy answer to what replicants actually are. One thing is certain, as more types of robots are introduced, and as definitions are solidified, it becomes more difficult to easily place the construction of the replicant within the spectrum of robotic representation.
Replicants are organic, bioengineered and genetically modified beings that are not considered human. Portrayed as a diverse group, with different levels of intelligence, functions, and gendered male and female, they are dangerous outsiders, difficult to detect when loosed in the general population. While Replicants are represented within Blade Runner by their maker as not human, their appearance, actions, ability to develop emotions, their desire to live and their fight to not die artificially, position them as human. Scant descriptions within Blade Runner fuel speculation without obvious answers. Replicants are manufactured humans, assigned model numbers and lines, with designations like “The Nexus 6“ model invoking corporate assignation of manufacture. They also possess transgenic attributes, with a hard programmed 4 year life span representing genetic manipulations 
similar to a Monsanto kill seed.
Within this taxonomy, Replicants do not qualify as androids because the category android is comprised of electro-mechanical robots designed to imitate a human male. Nor are they considered cyborgs, a combination of human and electro-mechanical parts, even though they are often referenced as such. While using these terms may seem more poetic, neither accurately assesses the representation of the Replicant, either within the context of Blade Runner, or as a common example of robots used to question the line of what is human and what is not. Placing them in the category of Human Robots, as an example of genetic engineering or manipulation is closer to their actual position, regardless of the subcategory to which they finally belong.
The case of replicants underlines how the representation of robots and related ideas has grown faster than the supporting terminology. It is common to find the terms android or cyborg applied to any type of robot. Without a higher level of specificity, the diversity of robots is obscured. If android means any robot, it introduces a gender bias at the top of any discussion of the topic, “andro” being the masculine prefix. If android is clarified to mean an electromechanical robot designed to simulate a human male, it opens up other possibilities for consideration, including that some robots might be female. Similarly, referring to any human or any robot as a cyborg obscures the deeper question of what it means to combine the two together. The cultural function of the Cyborg does not primarily question where the line of human/not human is drawn, it questions how far the human body can be modified, augmented and evolved through the use of technology.
Replicants are not the only example of linguistic and categorical problem in tracking robots, but they demonstrate how the use of taxonomic structure can clarify relationships to other ideas about robots. Each category and subcategory reveals connections not just to physical qualities, but that often robots envisioned in specific ways are also tasked with carrying particular kinds of stories. The question posed by replicants, “Can living, intelligent beings that share human DNA be considered non-human?”, is a question posed by almost every entry in the Human Robot category tree. It is not the same as the inquiries that inhabit other categories, though it shares similarities with several others.
