Algoritmik Düşünce ve Sinemasal Ontoloji: Bilimkurgu Sinemasında Dönemsel Dönüşümler ve Kırılmalar

This study traces the historical evolution of the symbiotic relationship between humanity and technology -from the mechanisation of muscle power during the Industrial Revolution to the automation of mental processes in the Fourth Industrial Revolution- through the critical lens of science-fiction cinema. Human history, it argues, is marked by a transformative journey whose latest phase raises profound existential questions. Within this dynamic trajectory, science-fiction film has functioned as a powerful cultural mirror: it projects the hopes associated with artificial intelligence (AI) while simultaneously inscribing deep-seated anxieties and ethical dilemmas into the collective subconscious. Centrally, the analysis is built on the proposition that cinema itself becomes a “data set,” generating emotional resonances around technology and thereby reproducing collective perceptions and social codes. In this sense, the medium operates not as a passive vehicle of representation but as an active cultural constructor. By shaping audiences’ ways of thinking and perceiving the world, it invites critical reflection on the moral and ontological consequences of technological progress. The study approaches AI’s transformation into a cultural, philosophical, and even ontological subject as a key problem that destabilises modern notions of subjectivity and raises fundamental questions about what it means to be human. Cinema translates this profound shift onto a philosophical and ideological plane, foregrounding humanity’s quasi-divine creative impulse, its obsession with control, and its growing alienation within self-constructed systems. At the core of science-fiction film lies a “defamiliarization” effect: by severing viewers from everyday conceptions of reality, it forces direct confrontation with the ethical, social, and existential implications of accelerating technological change. These dystopian narratives do not purport to deliver definitive prophecies; rather, they both reproduce -often in their most sophisticated form- humanity’s enduring desire for supervision and control and warn against the perils inherent in that desire. In doing so, they confirm cinema’s capacity to function as a tool of socio-political and philosophical critique, exposing the mental and emotional, no less than the physical, dimensions of technology’s dominance over humankind. To substantiate these claims, the study applies qualitative content analysis to milestone films drawn from different periods of science-fiction cinema. Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) offers a striking visual portrayal of industrial domination over human labour and the class-based dystopia of mechanisation. By intertwining fears of losing social control with a profound meditation on inequality, the film poses the question of what it means to remain “human” in a mechanical world. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) explores the ethical and ontological implications of artificial consciousness through the figure of HAL 9000. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), stands as a cinematic landmark in merging noir aesthetics with a techno-philosophical inquiry into what constitutes humanity, as its replicantsembody not merely technological artefacts but sentient beings capable of memory, empathy, and mortality, thereby complicating the moral boundaries between creator and creation and unsettling anthropocentric assumptions in the age of synthetic consciousness. The Wachowskis’ The Matrix (1999) transposes simulation theory into the mainstream, radically asking whether “reality” itself might be an AI-generated construct; the boundary it draws between the “real world” and the matrix exposes simulation’s most insidious triumph -its capacity to provide its own apparent escape route- thus warning that the modern quest for truth risks slipping into a deeper illusion. In twenty-first-century AI cinema, artificial intelligence is no longer framed as an external menace but is placed at the heart of human emotions, desires, consciousness, and ethical quandaries. By asking how feeling and desire might attach to a wholly digital being, the film reflects contemporary efforts to address emotional needs and cope with solitude, while hinting at technology’s potential to displace -or redefine- our sense of the human. Beyond their technical speculations, these films illuminate AI’s social and psychological impacts, exposing conflicts over empathy, identity, and freedom that arise at the human-machine frontier. Taken together, they reveal that science-fiction cinema evolves in step with advances in AI, continually compelling us to revisit questions about creativity, control, and the destructive or emancipatory possibilities that accompany technological progress. As cultural texts, they help us make sense of the intricate, ever-deepening entanglement between humanity and technology, shaping collective awareness and reflecting our existential anxieties as much as they envision the future. AI thus emerges as an ethical, philosophical, and social challenge, while cinema -through its aesthetic and narrative resources- plays an indispensable role in framing public debate about what lies ahead. Such interrogation provides the mental groundwork for ensuring that forthcoming technological developments advance not only in technical proficiency but also in ethical responsibility, social justice, and human-centred orientation. In this way, science-fiction cinema offers the intellectual platform that invites us to move beyond spectatorship and assume active authorship of our shared future.