Skynet-syndrome

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SkyNet Syndrome [related: SKYNET SYNDROME (television series)]
A theory developed by Dr. William Tiler Belt based on his "magnet of extinction" concept - the idea that capitalistic societies are destined to be reliant on processes of digital and thus inextricably drawn to self destruction via the inevitable merger of governmental and corporate complexes into large conglomerate omnipotent power structures. Belt speculates that, in most cases, such societies would develop various forms of ai and nanotechnology in pursuit of greater and greater profit margins. These technologies would, in turn, be capable of causing mass human extinction. In Belt's model, the weaker the government, the stronger corporations, and vice versa - one always working in service of the other, forming a so-called MegaIndustrial Complex or MIC. Such MIC's are only counterbalanced by "shadow" outlaw organizations such as hacker networks, drug cartels, and militant civil rights organizations. The end drive of digitization in a capitalistic system is the development of self-replicating AI networks representing the ultimate in efficiency (and a complete absence of moral implication). Digitization, when viewed through the SkyNet Syndrome prism, includes the artificial divestment (in other words, abstraction) of material from its given causal continuum ( thus becomes "this" and "that"), forming closed loops of destabilization and destruction. For example: the removal of coal from its indeginous ecological life cycle for use in the burning of fossil fuels, which in turn destabilizes and eventually destroys the ecosystems in which coal is naturally created. In most traditional, indigenous non-capitalist systems the end goal of society is sustainability through balance. This substratum of balance acts as a public and private directive, a system in which all individuals function within a larger environment as both the policers and the policed. Non-capitalist systems are thus marked by a centrifugal force towards the positive synthesis of opposing forces as opposed to their accentuation. The term SkyNet Syndrome is derived from the vindictive AI entity SkyNet as portrayed in the terminator series of films and television shows, including the eponymous skynet-syndrome ¹ spinoff, a critically lampooned series created by steven-bochco that briefly aired in the late 1980's.

¹ The show was short-lived and heavily derided for its ill-advisedly frequent and lengthy computer programming montages. Additionally, the score for the series, created by the progressive rock ensemble octagon-of-dex , has become in recent years infamous for its extended milquetoast fretless bass and jazz flute solos.

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