This past weekend, I went to see the new movie, Terminator Salvation. Before you click away, consider that the premise of The Terminator series of movies and TV shows actually says quite a bit about the ways people view computers, technology, information security, artificial intelligence, and information technology management. These are all the same things that your average Information Professional is supposed to be superhuman at handling.

terminator

For those of you unfamiliar with The Terminator movies, I will provide a short, non-movie spoiling summary. Man creates computers. Small start-up invents real artificial intelligence and sells it to US Air Force (USAF). USAF creates a network of computers to command and control the US nuclear arsenal. They call this network Skynet. Within minutes of initial activation, Skynet becomes sentient, decides humanity is a threat to itself, and launches a humanity erasing nuclear war to destroy humanity. After the nuclear war, Skynet has to create ever more human-like cyborgs to root out and exterminate the remnants of the human race.

As for my movie review?  The genius of the first and second movies was the plot:  Machine hunting humans – was brilliant. But the details were ridiculous in both movies. This has been turned on its side. The last two movies have been stupid plots with budgets that permitted the gorgeous details to distract you even further. In short, the great sci fi is gone but the silliness remains.  It is sad really…

Seriously though, what does it say about our profession that people will pay $10 to sit for 2 hours and watch these stories?  While suspending disbelief is required for all science fiction and summer blockbusters especially, the fantasy must be at least reasonable enough to get them in the door. Are people really afraid of their IT becoming self aware?  Do they think so little of our information security practices that they honestly think that a neural network could launch a nuclear attack all by itself?  Do they consider it plausible that machines could actually progress from desktop PCs and servers to indistinguishable from human android cyborgs with super strength and computational powers in only a decade?

I am not sure about the science in the fiction of Terminator, but I do know that it makes me seriously think about my users and stakeholders perceptions of what we do. Maybe we need to take some of the fear, uncertainty, and doubt out of our information technology and add a little more expectation education to our management.

I really want to hear what you think about the scare factor of IT?  Tell us what you thought of the movie, too. No matter what… Tomorrow…I’ll be back!

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for May 28, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .

Be Sociable, Share!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.