ABSTRACT
Scientists, engineers, and business sf writers complain that the Terminator franchise has warped the public’s imagination of automation. The Terminator is indeed far removed from the state of the art in automation, but there is truth in the embellishment: the truth of domination. Under capitalism, domination takes a particular form: deliberate action is subject to the aggregate and opaque choices of myriad market actors. To the extent that technology becomes a bearer of the market’s domination, the more it assumes the fetishized form of a “movement of things.” The Terminator is this movement of technological things—the speculative refraction of a social organization of technology that, because it happens behind our backs, appears to be not only autonomous but malevolent.
