It's amazing how quickly we, as a world culture, go about engineering the worst possible futures we've imagined in literature and film.

Subtopia posted last week about automated border defense systems in development around the Middle East–Israel, Saudi Arabia–smart robotic turrets that kill on sight. Robotic snipers along the Gaza Strip.

The latest evolution of Skynet went into space last month. Satellites working to more effectively network battlefield communication. Wireless uplinks. Marines navigating Fallujah with Google map on their Treo.

We seem giddy to put war in the hands of machines where it will become the fully automated business transaction we always wanted. No more causes; no more great evil or greater good. Just machines mapping rocket vectors, sweeping kill zones, routing damage estimates back to base where the data gets converted into profit and loss.

When’s the Metal Gear going on line?