he film features an abundance of technology throughout. As Reese sits alone in his stolen car waiting to intercept Sarah, he listens to music and advertisements on the radio as he watches large automated drills at work in the vacant lot beside him, his eyes squinting against the glare of spotlights. In the course of the narrative, this scene is crucial as it represents a trigger that causes Reese to dream, to flashback to the future; a future of pain, suffering and destruction at the hands of machines like the terminator.
             Constance Penley notes this fixation with present day technology as a key to understanding one of the subtexts of the film:
             "Machines provide the texture and substance of this film: cars, trucks, motorcycles, radios, TVs, time clocks, phones, answering machines. beepers, hair dryers, Sony Walkmen, automated factory equipment. The defence network computer of the future which decided our fate in a microsecond had its humble origins here, in the rather more innocuous technology of the film's present."
             Penley notes that this technology is not portrayed by the film as 'evil' in the way that the terminator is, but rather as an unfortunate hindrance, albeit a life threatening one to the fates of the characters. In the film a simple answering machine can give away Sarah's location to the terminator; a Sony Walkman can prevent her flatmate Ginger from hearing the brutal fight between the cyborg and her boyfriend which is happening in the next room.
             I believe that this lingering on 20th century technology also serves another purpose, that of naturalising the apocalypse of the future. The large flying laser-weaponed 'Hunter-Killers', used to spot and eliminate surviving humans may have seem far fetched, were it not for the inclusion of the Los Angeles police helicopters, which in a way perform a similar task - that of spotting human targets. This juxtaposition of the 're...