The heart of the human being is the future

Rating: 8/10 (16 July 2010)

You will not recognize the actors, or so little. Even the cameo of Schwarzenegger is computer-generated. The film does not bring much new data. It seems to be mixing time periods, but it does not matter. The machine world has been experimenting a new generation of robots, partly human (brain and heart, etc) and partly machine to infiltrate the resistance. They are capturing human beings now to create that new army of infiltrators. Logical but not revolutionary, my dear Watson, or is it Sherlock Holmes, I was going to say Shakespeare. Then the resistance has been able to devise a signal that can freeze the machines that are always controlled by come kind of wave. Interesting but only experimented at local level. The new thing though is that the only existing hybrid retains enough humanity to be a machine for the machines, and recognizable as such by them, but with a real loyalty to humans to the point of helping John Connor come into the headquarters of Skynet, the network that controls all the machines, liberate the prisoners there, have a final fight with the impersonation of Schwarzenegger, escape with Kyle Reeves, a key to the future and destroy the place, which is a "given back" for a "given gift" because the military headquarters of the resistance had been destroyed because they tried to send a general air strike on Skynet in San Francisco, a move which was successfully opposed by John Connor and thus did not happen, but the signal these generals had sent to all units had had the effect of being detected by Skynet who had sent their task force to clear the place in one big air strike. This episode, that will have to have a sequel since the salvation is not finished yet and has not reached liberation, ends with the hybrid being, Marcus Wright, giving his human heart to John Connor to save him before John Connors dies of his wounds. That human touch, quite in the style of Jesus giving his life to save humanity is going soft on our emotions and that's its main objective. A few tears please. But all together the story has not advanced a lot, except to prepare an eventual next episode that could be at least the first step towards liberation. But frankly the main danger of humanity today is not machines and an eventual take over from them, which would explain the relative flop of this film. It is more the take over the financial tycoons and traders of Wall Street had been able to perform leading the world nearly to the bottom of the abyss, at least to the brink of it. When I see the anti-machine or anti-technology stand of some in our society particularly among educators, I am amazed. This very week a university professor in education is advising us to take into account as the basis of our reflection the children who only have school at their disposal to acquire school-knowledge. I would like that very acute young man to tell me today what school-knowledge is in the knowledge economy and society, and to point out to me the child (a wolf child I guess, since so far wolves don't have TVs and smart phones) who would have had access to no other source of knowledge than school. These fake social climbing and politically-minded though not politically-correct except among Trotskyites intellectuals were those who refused to use the radio in class, and then who considered television as the killing challenger of school, and now consider that all communication tools have to be banned from schools and universities, first of all smart phones. Yes there are some in our universities who think smart phones are nothing but a means of cheating. This ideology is behind the Terminator series, but it is today very passé, very prehistorical, if history started with the GUIs (Graphical Users Interfaces). A highly considered communication expert I read in some paper lately considers that the technological revolution of our time started in the early 1990s. What an ignoramus. I would have sworn the Internet was first successfully tested between Stanford and Oakland, California, in the fall 1969, and that the first GUI was invented by Apple for its first McIntosh, and then by Microsoft with Windows 3.1, both at the beginning of the 1980s. Why should we be afraid of machines? The Matrix was a lot more positive on the subject, even if the tale needs a human sacrifice, a Savior of sorts to conquer peace with machines and to rebut for a while the engineering mind behind it all, behind all the Mr. Smiths of this world.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID