The aliens are biologically perfect and their insect-like solidarity is total. They don’t need the technology the humans have (even if they’re intelligent enough to manipulate it). The corporation wants to weaponize them.

It’s also human beings’ ability to detach themselves from corporations (through empathic, family-like fellow-feeling) and technology (quite literally, in the case of Ripley being able to climb out of the exoskeleton and the alien queen pulling off her shoe rather than her leg) that ultimately helps them overcome. So it’s a complex message.

In this decade, corporations have encroached upon nation-states as the Earth’s dominant organizational structure. In 2000, 51 of the world’s 100 largest corporate entities were corporations, 49 were countries. In 2005, 63% of the 150 largest global economic enterprises were corporations.

Stross mentions that corporations lack “patriotic loyalty,” because they are not human, and have become multi-national. But they do inspire (or demand) their own “corporate loyalty.”

Science fiction often posits the corporation as ruling power — and it’s usually subtextually castigated, such as Aliens’ Weyland-Yutani or Resident Evil’s Umbrella.

Are nations better than corporations? Many countries today have idealistic goals and underlying principles, but so do many corporations (“Do no evil”). Communism has failed. In the past (and still today, in some places) nation-states were built solely by force of royalty, armies or dictators, with no other purpose for being.

When Earth makes contact with another planet, who will represent us? One nation (the US?) or one company?

Riffing on my Paterson–inspired “every man is a city” idea, you could also say that every man (and woman) is a corporation — or at least there are moments where we act, think, and behave as if we were a corporation, rather than an individual, head of household, or leader of a polity.

Think about every time you’ve done or said or avoided saying or avoided doing something principally because of the potentially consequences for your potential or future bottom-line, either as an individual or for the group you represent (to the extent that these interests are identified). Think about every time you’ve thought in all seriousness about developing, publicizing, or defending your “brand.” You’ve shifted your reference. You’ve become corporate being.

So it’s not that corporations are somehow a different form of life from us. They’re part of our “posthuman” evolution. And in fact, you could probably make a better case that the evolution and organization of the corporation as a mode of life in conjunction with the development of technology has more to do with our transformation as a species than the incorporation of new technology alone.

How do bacteria revolt against the rise of humans? They don’t. They just go on, trying to survive in a new environment that’s changed for various reasons that they don’t quite understand.

Imagine. Maybe corporations are already in communication with some higher galactic intelligence, first contact has already happened and WE WILL NEVER KNOW. We’ll just wonder why our environment seems to have gotten inexplicably ___er.