the start of Skynet

That author should do fewer drugs.

If you want to see the beginnings of Skynet, look at the demonstration (just past prototype) unmanned fighter planes.

McDonald Douglas, Boeing, etc. are competing for the next version.

There is one demonstrater that is scary looking almost like the ones in Terminator. The ones that were being developed (demonstrated) and were hoving while techs where at display screens all around working on code or whatever.

These things will fly to the other side of the world, conduct a search and destroy mission, then fly home and land, completely without human intervention. All on their own. Figuring out how to get there, managing their fuel, finding the target, insuring there won't be injuries to civilians, firing the rockets or dropping the smart bombs, then get home, landing (including aircraft carriers) and taxying into the hanger and shutting down.

And they are working on actual unmanned, with no human control and no link to the ground except video feed and stats, air superity fighter plans. So small the enemy planes can't target them, but super fast and able to maneuver beyond the physical limits of a human, firing air-to-air missiles killing the enemy before they know they've been targeted.

There is Skynet for ya!

privateer; so you're saying unmanned fighter planes are scarier than GOOGLE knowing what genre of porn I prefer? The scary part is hackers having access to that much info in one place. Cyber terrorism is becoming a huge threat. The skynet comparison he makes is just plain stupid, but the premise is still scary.

No, I am saying that Skynet was a computer network that took over the war machines and factories of the humans.

Google might become part of Skynet, or even the progenitor of Skynet, but only if it takes over all the computers in peoples homes and uses them to form a neural network with enough nodes to become self-aware.

Google cannot do that, and since they agreed to abide by privacy laws, before they will determine the physical location (map coordinates) of your computer, they have to ask. If you click NO then they don't do it.

This is hardly Skynet behavior.

On the other hand, as the newest generation of unmanned autonomous fighter and bomber planes come out of demonstration and into use, it is clear they already have sufficient computational power for a Skynet kind of take over. Hence becoming the weapons of Skynet in the real world.

So yes, the new gen autonomous fighter planes are far more scary than Google, because Google is not a candidate to become Skynet, at least until the US Military in general, and NORAD in specific, modify Google so that it acts to protect the military networks.

If that comes to pass, then yes, Google is more scary than planes a remote smart computer can take command of and shoot or bomb anything in world it wants, and no radar can see it, and no fighter pilot will see it visually until his/her plane is hit by a missile from the unmanned fighter.

Also, you are confusing Skynet with Big Brother.

Big Brother seeks to control mankind..... sounds like something Google is trying to do ever so slightly, in the most benign of ways. And by allowing you to opt out by clicking NO.

Skynet seeks to destroy mankind..... something Google is not likely to envision or desire.

"On March 1, 2012, Google will consolidate the privacy policies for 60 of its products creating the singularly most significant database of the Information Age. The aggregation of these data will empower Google to correlate and contextualize our thoughts, aspirations, actions, physical locations and the timelines for the basic processes of the doing of life."
This is the premise that I meant is scary, not the whole google = skynet thing. Not because of what google will do with the info, but what someone else will. I'm not worried about me, but google is entrenched in almost everything on the internet, and all that info in the wrong hands could be devastating.