After reading Dayna Tortorici’s My Instagram where she discusses her gradual addiction and dependence on the Instagram app, the idea of Skynet and how it affects those in the Terminator universe popped into my head. It’s weirdly similar how her problems with identity dependence due to app addiction mirrors the same dependence on technology that allowed Skynet to become the technological behemoth that John Connor faces in the future.
When Tortorici was detailing how drastically her life changed because of technology, the only thing that clicked in my head was how the Terminator universe was forever changed when Skynet became self-aware and nuked the world to hell. The magnitudes of these two events aren’t nearly the same, but stripped down to the bone, these events aren’t really different at all. Life for both Tortorici and 3 billion people were changed due to technology, and that’s as clear as the comparison gets. Tortorici’s dependence on the app led her to experiencing Instagram subcultures, life changes and made her see how different life is being shown in order to cater to Instagram audiences, while humanity’s dependence on computer systems led to the near-destruction of their world and species, and made them have to fight for their very lives and future.
It’s also really interesting and a bit scary how the trackers in Instagram and other similar media like Facebook view photos and human lives the way Terminators view their surroundings. Instagram image recognizing data is listed in basic detail such as “1 person, smiling, text”, and “night, sky, outdoor”… that’s SERIOUSLY and creepily close to the way Terminator data is shown to be processed as depicted in the movies: “Scan Mode: Analysis Complete. Fit Match: 100%”, “Target Acquired. Analysis: Series 1000 Terminator Prototype”. It makes you wonder what would happen in real life if we developed our technology sufficiently enough to be close to Skynet. Are we capable of such feats? Should we even attempt to try? The way technology is advancing nowadays really makes you wonder if the science fiction books about technology leading to conflict are really just science fiction…
