Congressional Testimony
Congressional Testimony
[Megan and Cueball sitting against a leafless tree; they are on opposite sides.] Megan: Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress this week. Cueball: Should be interesting.
[Beat panel.]
Megan: I recently re-watched Terminator . Cueball: Yeah?
Megan: It's weird that the thing that evolved into Skynet wasn't our nuclear launch systems or our humanoid robots. Megan: It was the phone book where the Terminator looked up Sarah Connor's address. Cueball: Funny how things turn out.

Megan and Cueball are discussing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's upcoming testimony before Congress . The prepared testimony was released on the day this comic was released--see Congress releases Mark Zuckerberg's prepared testimony ahead of Wednesday's hearing . Facebook is facing questions on the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal involving the collection of personal information of up to 87 million Facebook users by the political targeting firm Cambridge Analytica.
Megan then starts talking about re-watching The Terminator , a movie about a killer robot called "the Terminator" sent back in time by Skynet , a computer system that became self-aware (AI) and tried to kill off humans. The Terminator, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger , was sent back to try to kill the mother of the leader of the resistance before he was born. In the movie, the Terminator looked up the mother's name, Sarah Connor, in the phone book of a phone booth to find her address.
Megan notices how strangely things have turned out in the real world. In the movie it was a nuclear launch system that turned on humans, building humanoid robots to hunt humans down; today, despite the fact that we have computer-controlled nuclear launch systems as well as humanoid robots, it was rather the modern version of said phone book that became our version of Skynet (Facebook). The computer program that tracks our information in a manner similar to a phone book was responsible for doing harm to its users by selling their information (and now it could be said to harm the people who created it, as well, since Zuckerberg is on trial). Cueball can only agree with her how funny things always turn out in retrospect.
The title text makes the claim that James Cameron , who directed the first two films, was planning to make a third movie in the 1990s, which would have been the really prophetic one (i.e. the one that would have mirrored our present day most closely). Therefore, Skynet, having seen the result of this movie, wished to prevent the movie from ever being made, sending yet another robot back in time to prevent Cameron from directing it. Instead, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was released in 2003 and directed by Jonathan Mostow . Although Cameron is credited for writing it, he only created the characters. Since then three other movies have been made, all with different directors.
[Megan and Cueball sitting against a leafless tree; they are on opposite sides.] Megan: Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress this week. Cueball: Should be interesting.
[Beat panel.]
Megan: I recently re-watched Terminator . Cueball: Yeah?
Megan: It's weird that the thing that evolved into Skynet wasn't our nuclear launch systems or our humanoid robots. Megan: It was the phone book where the Terminator looked up Sarah Connor's address. Cueball: Funny how things turn out.
