Aboard Discovery, Bowman and Poole use pen and paper to take notes there are no laptop computers or PDAs to be found anywhere. In the film, astronauts on the Moon use a still film camera to take pictures of the alien artifact today we would use a digital videocamera. Today, we can't even return to the Moon.įurther, Clarke and Kubrick failed to predict the biggest advance of the past 20 years: miniaturization and microelectronics. Perhaps this will come to pass in another 30 years, but it seems unlikely. The story depicts a huge space station and space weapons in Earth orbit, routine commercial spaceflight, and two colonies - one American and one Russian - on the Moon itself. Though Clarke and Kubrick might have gotten the physics right, their technological time line was woefully inaccurate: we are far behind the film's schedule today. "I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all, I think, that any conscious entity can ever hope to do." "My mission responsibilities range over the entire operation of the ship, so I am constantly occupied," HAL confidently tells a BBC newscaster during a television interview. He even has the capability to complete the mission on his own, should something happen to the crew. By that time, HAL has been charged with protecting his passengers and ensuring the successful completion of the secret mission. If you take 2001: A Space Odyssey literally, then right about now, somewhere in Urbana, Illinois, an intelligent machine is stumbling through a pathetic version of the song: "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do." January 12, 1997, is the birthday of HAL.įour years later, after a hell of a lot of additional lessons, HAL and five human crew members are on the spaceship Discovery approaching Jupiter. The HAL 9000 computer - an artificial intelligence that could think, talk, see, feel, and occasionally go berserk - was supposed to be operational in January 1997.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |