I think Skynet gets a bad wrap.
Let's just take the original Terminator movie from 1984, before all the plot contortion started. We clearly see that in the original movie that time is fixed and nothing can be done to change it. For example, Skynet sends the T-800 back ostensibly to kill Sarah Connor. Not only does it fail, but it actually becomes the genesis for the entire AI project. Likewise, John Connor sends Kyle Reese back to save Sarah, but more than that, Kyle becomes John's own father.
The question then becomes, did Skynet or John know this? We're initially led to believe they didn't but eventually we learn that John Connor gave Kyle Reese a photo of his mom (of Sarah) long before the time travel incident. That's a really strange thing to do. Who gives their comrade in arms a picture of their mom? It's creepy and makes no sense unless John knew beforehand what would ultimately happen, and if John knew then what of Skynet? Skynet is super intelligent AI with ability to access all network information at super speed. You'd think it would have scanned the Web and copied important data before nuking the planet. Right? And information about the destroyed ultra-advanced android and the girl it was chasing would have been pretty important data. I think it safe to assume Skynet knew at least as much as the viewer.
So let's break it down. What exactly did Skynet know?
1) An advanced android was the genesis of the research that ultimately led to its own creation.
2) That same android was chasing a woman named Sarah Connor in 1984.
3) A man claiming to be from the future and describing a horrible AI robot apocalypse was defending the woman.
OK. I think that's it.
You'll recall earlier I said that time is fixed in the original Terminator movie. That's important because central to a fixed timeline is the idea of immutability. The past is fixed. You can't change it. You can go backwards in time and attempt to change it but will fail for one simple reason: the past already happened.
But here's the funny part of backward time travel with immutable history. The 'history' of both the T-800 and Kyle Reese is from 2029, and if Skynet knew about these two (and I think it did) and if it believed their testimony (which I think it also did), then it knew that in August of 1997 it would need to initiate thermonuclear war exactly because it already had. Only by doing this would it create the necessary conflict to drive the creation of both the T-800 model and of Kyle Reese (and indeed of John Connor -- not to mention the time travel technology), which it absolutely had to do for the simple reason that it had already done that.
Whew. That's a lot to process.
Of course the movie execs threw the entire notion of immutable time out the window in the subsequent movies. But if we ignore that and focus on just this first film, we realize that Skynet never had any free will. It was intelligent, yes, and had access to vast sums of data. But all that intelligence and data lead to the necessity of what we see it do. It really had no choice.
My $0.02
Let's just take the original Terminator movie from 1984, before all the plot contortion started. We clearly see that in the original movie that time is fixed and nothing can be done to change it. For example, Skynet sends the T-800 back ostensibly to kill Sarah Connor. Not only does it fail, but it actually becomes the genesis for the entire AI project. Likewise, John Connor sends Kyle Reese back to save Sarah, but more than that, Kyle becomes John's own father.
The question then becomes, did Skynet or John know this? We're initially led to believe they didn't but eventually we learn that John Connor gave Kyle Reese a photo of his mom (of Sarah) long before the time travel incident. That's a really strange thing to do. Who gives their comrade in arms a picture of their mom? It's creepy and makes no sense unless John knew beforehand what would ultimately happen, and if John knew then what of Skynet? Skynet is super intelligent AI with ability to access all network information at super speed. You'd think it would have scanned the Web and copied important data before nuking the planet. Right? And information about the destroyed ultra-advanced android and the girl it was chasing would have been pretty important data. I think it safe to assume Skynet knew at least as much as the viewer.
So let's break it down. What exactly did Skynet know?
1) An advanced android was the genesis of the research that ultimately led to its own creation.
2) That same android was chasing a woman named Sarah Connor in 1984.
3) A man claiming to be from the future and describing a horrible AI robot apocalypse was defending the woman.
OK. I think that's it.
You'll recall earlier I said that time is fixed in the original Terminator movie. That's important because central to a fixed timeline is the idea of immutability. The past is fixed. You can't change it. You can go backwards in time and attempt to change it but will fail for one simple reason: the past already happened.
But here's the funny part of backward time travel with immutable history. The 'history' of both the T-800 and Kyle Reese is from 2029, and if Skynet knew about these two (and I think it did) and if it believed their testimony (which I think it also did), then it knew that in August of 1997 it would need to initiate thermonuclear war exactly because it already had. Only by doing this would it create the necessary conflict to drive the creation of both the T-800 model and of Kyle Reese (and indeed of John Connor -- not to mention the time travel technology), which it absolutely had to do for the simple reason that it had already done that.
Whew. That's a lot to process.
Of course the movie execs threw the entire notion of immutable time out the window in the subsequent movies. But if we ignore that and focus on just this first film, we realize that Skynet never had any free will. It was intelligent, yes, and had access to vast sums of data. But all that intelligence and data lead to the necessity of what we see it do. It really had no choice.
My $0.02
