I never read The Watchmen when I was growing up. Apparently that was a process done under a rock somewhere… I was too busy with the moral depth of the X-men to bother with a whole ‘nother comic. That said, The Watchmen was something referred to by my sipsac sucking peers in hushed, conspiratorial whispers. “Pssst: have you seen this?” Of course I had. The cover art was wild, and spoke of dark heroism, replete with the nightmares that all champions wake to in cold sweats. A bit like Wolverine’s rough and tumble righteous bloodletting in contrast to the sanitized Samaritanism of the rest of the team. But I’d never read a single line of The Watchmen.

And now I don’t have to. I can see the movie instead. 🙂

Alternate Title: Submit to Skynet Now… the Privacy and Terms of Use links at the bottom of the site connect to Warner Brothers, so I guess this is supposed to be part of the marketing shtick for the new Terminator: Salvation movie. Other than that, though, there aren’t any links to trailers or anything else that might be an obvious part of the Terminator universe.

The flick looks incredible. This site, well, a little flat… like something you’d see in an earlier Schwarzie movie  – I’m thinking of in-movie marketing for memory implants in Total Recall – rather than something more up to date. Not passe enough to be retro. Maybe I’ll warm to it. Anyway, while you’re there, don’t forget to sign up for Skynet’s human tracking and targeting system email updates.

A quick check on the webs tells me I’m a few weeks late in picking up on the viral marketing for the movie. Sigh. Oh well, enjoy – a trailer for the game, instead of the talking pictures:

 

Why am I posting this, you ask? Yes, there’s more to it than a childhood predilection for sci-fi. There’s an adult predilection for it, too, masquerading as scholarly interest in the framing and ethics of battlespace regulatory regimes – which feels increasingly like the suspension of human judgment is in part about the automation of cybernetics, robotics, etc. We’re going to be hosting a symposium on the subject here in a few weeks, so stay tooned tuned.

Via Ken Anderson at Opinio Juris, a NYT report that Human Rights Watch’s Allison Des Forges was on board Continental Airlines Flight 3407 when it went down. No one survived the crash. I’m stunned.