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Television Media

2001: A Space Prophecy 135

Posted by Hemos from the looking-at-the-future/past dept.
jerkychew writes "CNN is airing a five-part special about Kubrick's now-legendary 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here is a clip from their webpage: Starting December 26, Headline News Space Science and Technology Correspondent Allard Beutel looks at the technological vision put forth by Kubrick and co-screenwriter Sir Arthur Clarke. In a five-part series called, "2001: A Space Prophecy," Beutel compares science in the year 2001 to science in the movie "2001." Click to CNN for more information, and the series schedule."
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2001: A Space Prophecy More

2001: A Space Prophecy

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  • If I seem to recall it correctly it was Sir Arthur C. Clarke's vision.
  • Actually, it is their collective vision. It was co-written by Clarke and Kubrick (the book came after the film, I believe).
  • Actually Clarke wrote an essay on 2001 in his early years. He changed it a lot from input by Kurbrick before the movie was made. The book was influenced by the movie, but that doesnt mean his name should be left out in the slashdot story :) Both deserve the credits.
  • Hi all,

    I live in the UK.
    Is there anyway I can see this series?
    Apart from buy satellite equip? LOL!
    Are any of the UK tv terresterial stations planning to air anytime in the near future?

    ukNutter
  • Kubrick's now-legendary 2001: A Space Odyssey.

    Sheez.. Kubrick made the movie, but the story's Arthur C Clarke's. I know the US is a visual culture, but hasn't anyone read the book 2001? It's true that they cowrote the story (but the *idea* came from Clarke's short story The Sentinel).

    Clarke (who also invented the concept of communication satellites) is the one that has truly changed the world.

    PS. There are also thee sequels (atleast in book form) to 2001 - 2010, 2061 and 3001. In 3001 Frank Poole is reviewed to see a very different earth - it would be interesting to see how far off Clarke will be.

    -henrik

  • I find myself wondering if, in another 20 years' time, kids will be able to understand what this movie (and of course the book) was, how it shaped the way many people thought about space, and what the story meant to people.

    Unfortunately, I get this feeling that they're going to watch it and think "Uh-huh. It's, like, some guy in space, dead people, and a mad computer. Yawn. C'mon, this one doesn't even have any light sabres or aliens!"...

    In my head it's always going to be a classic, though. Like that really old one with the guy with the moustache that didn't give a damn, and that catty woman with the big house and the cotton, during that civil war thing. Y'all know.

  • The story is based on the short story "The Sentinel" anyway.

    Rich

  • Go get this [amazon.com] book and see what the fuss is all about. The book is excellent and I highly recommend it.

    It focuses on the chess game, artificial intelligence, voice, and image recognition and the computing power necessary to accomplish such tasks.

    It was published in 1997, supposedly on the same date HAL 9000 was born.

  • 2001 is the best SF film I've ever seen, and I speak as one who got to see Star Wars I on the second day it was out in the UK - special trip to Leicester Square in London and everything, which was a big deal for a seven-year old ;)

    The coolest thing about the depiction of tech in the film is that, for the first time, the post-modern banality of hi-tech was successfully shown. Check the early scene where the scientist is buzzing around in shuttle craft en-route for the moon. The decor, stewardesses, the whole atmosphere is like any generic jetliner -- in the 60s, or today. Or when Bowman plays chess with HAL and gets videomail from his family: purely routine, banal, un-romantic, technocratic. It's just a job.

    (imdb) 2001 [imdb.com] is wonderful but let's not try to pretend that Clarke is responsible for the film -- it was Stanley Kubrick [imdb.com] who made the film, and as he also made another of my all-time top five Doctor Strangelove [imdb.com] (or , how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb), you have to give the props to him. I mean, apart from a random prediction about geo-stationary satellites which happened to be accurate -- oh wait, that wasn't even a prediction, he just noticed it would be possible -- what the hell else did Clarke do that (say, as random Slashdot-friendly examples) John Wyndham, Brian Aldiss or Michael Moorcock didn't manage? In fact Moorcock even got to appear on stage with Hawkwind, top that.
    --
    If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

  • sigh....

    you obviously were not watching it in the correct frame of mind (or alternatively, without taking a mind altering substance or two).

    Have a beer or ten... or perhaps a bit o weed... or some fungus... and try again. You'll like it. Especially that part with 10 minutes of flashing color and the fetus.

  • No, Kubrick does (Score:4)

    by Paul Crowley ( 837 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @03:16PM (#1423240) Homepage Journal
    Clarke himself has said that Kubrick deserves more credit for the vision of the future in 2001, and the fundamental story ideas, than he does. "The Sentinel" is the germ of an idea, but 2001 is the whole damn tree, cut down and made into a mind-bending sculpture with lots of extra added bits. Clarke certainly deserves a prominent credit, but fundamentally it's Kubrick's film.

    2001 the book was written after the film.
    --
  • The series is on CNN. as they've been widely regarded as the official 'information' dissemination arm for each and every western gov't since about 1988, I would hazard a guess and say, yes, you will be able to watch this series, along with the rest of the sheep, either here in the US or in your 'native UK'. merry hollidays, thx.

    :::
  • I tried to watch the 6 PM showing of it, and on both CNN and Headline News, nothing about 2001 was on. CNN was talking about some celebrity and Headline News was going on about stocks. I didn't catch it right at 6:00, it was 6:07, but you'd think this series would be longer than 5 minutes. Or is the segment for the 2001 story really that short? Has anyone managed to catch it already?
  • The story is based on the short story "The Sentinel" anyway

    Quite loosely based, really, and only the parts having to do with finding the monolith on the moon, not the monkey-men or the trip to Jupiter/Saturn (movie/book) or the subsequent craziness.
  • Nothing like an intelligent, well-thought out, accurate, non-libelous comment, is there?
  • It is one of three or four great movies about AI. The others being "Terminator," "War Games," and "The Matrix."

    I wonder ever if someone will make a movie where the smart 'patooters don't kill us?

    --

  • It should be Clark and Kubrick's 2001, as Clark stated in the forward of one reprint edition (of the novel) that the book changed quite a bit from his original vision once he started working with Kubrick.

    Also with no disrespect to the late Mr Kubrick, the movie version of 2001 is way too long and boring, especially for today viewers. The main problem is probably the outdated visual effects. But the openning scene remains one of the most powerful openning scene of all time! It is too bad no one is planning a remake next year.

    And finally if I remember correctly it is one of the first (if not THE first) movie to use classical scores extensively.



    ====

  • Unfulfilled projections (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @03:37PM (#1423247)

    I, for one, am extremely disappointed concerning the technological status quo at the end of 2000 vis-a-vis the vision given in Kubrick's movie. Here is why:

    1) We have no magnificent space stations in orbit, and one is not in sight. We do have a a couple of pathetic wannabees, but that's that.

    2) We have no regular passenger shuttle flights from Earth to a super space station.

    3) We have no moon base, and no chances of getting one in the reasonably forseeable future.

    4) We have no efficient suspended animation techniques.

    5) We have no AI even remotely comparable to HAL, and no reasonable chances of developing one any time soon, despite the enthusiasm of some AI practitioners.

    6) We have no manned spaceflights beyond a few hundred kilometers above the Earth's surface.

    7) We have no videophones.

    8) We have no instantaneous, cheap videophone connections from orbit.

    9) We have no BBC-12.

    So, what do we have? Well, if we remember what things were like 34 years ago, when the movie was being developed, we have to acknowledge that the big picture is pretty much the same today as it was then.

    Sure we have more powerful computers, the Internet, and a few extra gadgets, but nothing even closely as revolutionary (maybe with the exception of the Internet) as the stuff shown in the movie.

    What a disappointment.

  • You may have missed the point (Score:5)

    by Grant Elliott ( 132633 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @03:40PM (#1423248)
    You obviously never read the book. Though the book and the movie where developed essentially at the same time, there are some significant variations (most notably that Discovery is headed for Saturn in the book). Kubrick did a spectacular job on the movie, especially considering technology of the time, but some aspects of Clarke's epic vision elude capture in this medium. Sadly, most people who only watch the movie completely miss the point of many scenes.

    I imagine the entire hotel scene seemed pointless to you. In the movie, there was no clear way to present its meaning. In the book, this scene serves to explain the underlying principles of the storyline you claim does not exist. In short, the images on the television (including a shot of this hotel room) reveal Dave's distance from home through their age.

    From this and other observations, Dave learns the purpose of the monoliths. They form an intricate spy network, watching developing species and attempting to assist their development. Herein lies the purpose of the opening scene, which you also probably didn't understand. We are not the products of time. We are the creations of a spectactular race of beings.

    In the book, one learns that this race first prolonged their existance by transfering their being into machines. This too, alas, had limitations, and the beings soon found a way to weave themselves into the very fabric of the universe. Having gained immortality, they became bored and began improving other species. (Starcraft really ripped this whole thing off...) That is the purpose of the "glowing fetus." Bowman became ome of them: a star child.

    Finally, the vast majority of viewers completely misunderstood HAL's behavior. His apparent insanity was the result of a conflict of interest. He was programmed to simultaneously keep Frank and Dave (essentially nothing more than janitors, though they didn't know that) aware of any situations that could jeopardize the mission as well as with-hold from them the true nature of this mission (investigation of the monoliths). HAL could only find one solution to this problem, albeit not what the programmers intended.

    Oh, and that "10 minutes of random flashing color." That sequence lasts only a few minutes and is one of the most famous scenes in movie history. You don't like it? Deal with it (fast-forward if necessary). Better yet, go read the book.

    Anyone interested in this spectacular vision should read the rest of the series. In addition, read Hal's Legacy which offers an interesting look at what it would take to build a HAL.

    By the way, don't think I don't like the movie. 2001 is one of the best movies of all time. Kubrick did a spectacular job. Somehow, though, a movie can never capture the essence of a book.

  • Europa prophecy (Score:3)

    by B.D.Mills ( 18626 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @03:49PM (#1423249)
    One of the best prophecies in the film concerns life on Jupiter's moon Europa. In the movie, we were told about Life on Europa, with the warning: ALL THESE MOONS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA / ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.... Now scientists are speculating that Europa is the best prospect for extraterrestrial life in the solar system, because it contains a salty ocean beneath its icy surface, and that life fuelled by Europa's internal tidal heat may be present.

    --

  • Re:No, Kubrick does (Score:3)

    by great throwdini ( 118430 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @03:56PM (#1423250)
    Clarke certainly deserves a prominent credit, but fundamentally it's Kubrick's film.

    My understanding -- informed in part from Clarke's own writings -- is that the book and the movie were written/fashioned (more or less) at the same time. So, Clarke's "novelization" was partly influenced by Kubrick's movie-making -- and vice versa, the whole "chocolate-peanut butter" scenario in spades.

    Each "author" was free to ignore the influences of the other. For those who have both read the book and seen the movie, it is clear Clarke/Kubrick often chose to turn away from outside suggestions in favor of his own personal notions.

    So, although the movie strongly reflects Kubrick's vision, and the book, Clarke's, there was a bit of idea exchange going on in the background. Book != Movie, but they were not developed in isolation from one another.

  • I had actually heard from a friend that no one could understand this movie without reading the book first. Don't think I am some book-hating bigot, although 2001 isn't the typical thing I read in my spare time. For example I read Contact before it was made into a movie, and I enjoyed is a lot -- but on the other hand I thought the movie portrayed it pretty effectively too. Kubrick obviously failed to do this. Whether or not that was "impossible" is open for debate. But regardless the point I was making is that the movie is really kind of crappy. The pace is ridiculously slow, with a lot of repetition and really long boring space scenes. While I'm sure the effects (look! people sitting upside-down!) were spectacular in their day, to a contemporary viewer such as myself they register as a big fat so-what.

    Likewise with the score...gee...Blue Danube...never heard that before...thanks for playing it throughout the entire freaking movie.

    I'm sorry but I don't see anything redeeming about the color scene. As another poster suggests perhaps a healthy dose of LSD is required to appreciate it?

    Anyway, nothing on the book, and nothing on Kubrick, but I don't see what all the fuss is about regarding the film.
    -W.W.
  • I guess we can forget about the use of "Preludes to Eternity" 8-)

    Classical music has ALWAYS been used extensively by low-budget movies. It's cheaper!

  • There is a 360 degree walk around of the ISS that requires the IPix plugin, has anyone been able to grab a copy and test it with Mozilla? When I visit the plugin page a Java applet redirects to the usual "Unknown Browser blah blah" page...
  • Actualy the book and the movie were written at the same time. To quote the IMDB's trivia page: [imdb.com]

    Stanley Kubrick initially approached Arthur C. Clarke by saying that he wanted to make "the proverbial good science-fiction movie". Clarke suggested that "The Sentinel", a short story he wrote in 1948, story would provide a suitable premise. Clarke had written the story for a BBC competition, but it didn't even make the shortlist.

    The screenplay was written primarily by Kubrick and the novel primarily by Clarke, each workingsimultaneously and also providing feedback to the other. As the story went through many revisions, changes in the novel were taken over into the screenplay and vice versa. It was also unclear whether film or novel would be released first; in the end it was the film. Kubrick was to have been credited as second author of the novel, but in the end was not. It is believed that Kubrick deliberately withheld his approval of the novel as to not hurt the release of the film.

  • From the linked-to CNN page:

    Reaction from many of the New York film critics was downright hostile [...] But audiences loved it, and soon many of the critics and moguls who panned the movie had a change of heart. Two weeks later, Newsday's Gelmis said "2001" was a "masterpiece."

    Not surprising, as many of the "greats" never started off on the right foot with critics. "Bonnie and Clyde", "Night of the Hunter", "Singin' in the Rain", etc.

    Personally, I'm not so interested in how well the 2001 of today matches with the technological vision of "2001", the movie. What amazes me time and time again is how well the movie holds up, both technically and simply as a vision, after all these years. Barring the monkey suits, of course. :)

    Every time I watch 2001 -- trying my best to ignore the downright shoddy mastering of the DVD at the hands of MGM -- I ask myself which (if any) of today's films will achieve lifespans similar to "2001" in the years to come. Or, perhaps, whether the use of CGI in films "dates" them too quickly, blocking whatever vision there may be to a film through experimentation with then "state-of-the-art" computer animation.

    On the other hand, I also wonder whether critics of today would be any more forgiving of a future masterpiece -- for DVD buffs, Ed Norton discusses this very topic on a commentary track to "Fight Club" ... drifting back to the topic of futurist visions (as embodied in "2001"), have any films been made in the last couple decades which will stand the test of time alongside "2001"?

  • Tid-bit [darkhorizons.com] about "the pictures and sounds having been digitally enhanced."

  • True. I was just making the point that if you were looking for the original creator, then there's an obvious pointer to Clarke. If you're looking for someone to attrribue the film to, quite clearly it was a collaborative effort and not attributed to one specific person.

    As a point of interest, there is a book worth reading called "The lost worlds of 2001" in which Clarke writes about the making of the film and the collaborative process involved and includes some alternative storylines which didn't make it into the final book/film. Most strikingly a couple of alternative endings which would have been considerably more interesting but harder to film.

    Funnilly enough, as much as I enjoy reading Science Fiction, 2001 is one of those films that I've never seen all the way through at one time. I usually catch it somewhere halfway through or have to go out or something.

    Rich

  • How on earth could that post be considered a flame? All the statements are true, they don't attack any person or group.

    If anyone is posting flame-bait, it's you.
  • >> Having gained immortality, they became bored
    >> and began improving other species. (Starcraft
    >> really ripped this whole thing off...)

    Scarcely the only ones. Not even the only ones
    in gaming, vide _Traveller_. Everybody rips
    ideas off; the question is what they do with
    them. Traveller and Starcraft did good.

    Chris Mattern
  • The whole point of all the experiments on the ISS is that there is no gravity to malform crystals and structures.
    Having a completely rotating station would be hell if there were any small problems with the superstructure. The ISS is humanities fourth major step in space (Salyut, Skylab, Mir, ISS) and there is a LOT to learn before we get really ambitious and attempt even minimal gravity.

    --
  • Interestingly, we also have no:

    Bell Telephone

    Pan-Am

    Soviet Union

    And who, looking at the state of the world then, would have thought that any of those monoliths would vanish away?

  • Well, the only problem with this argument is that I'm pretty sure the book was written after the film, although Clarke and Kubrick cowrote the screenplay. As I understood things, Arthur C. Clarke's novel contains his interpretation (granted, a particularly important one) of some of the ideas Kubrick chose to convey completely visually in the film. It presents one way to view the film, but not the only way and not necessarily the "correct" way. If Kubrick intended to only convey Clarke's version of the story, he could have made the ideas much more explicit. IMO, one of the greatest things about Kubrick's film is the many interpretations it supports and the amount of thinking it leaves to the viewer.
  • and this is the whole point. This may very well be a good movie to have as a companion to the book but for everyone else who hasn't read the book it was a poor attempt at screenplay. If it was "impossible" to turn the book into a movie it shouldn't have been attempted.
  • That'd probably be Spielberg's new movie, which is a story by Kubrick, "AI".

  • 2001 and computer reliability (Score:4)

    by adam ( 1231 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @05:15PM (#1423265)
    I've seen 2001 many times and love the film (need to go back and reread the book). About a year ago, I happened across it on TV and thought a bit about the special effects and the technological visions, and marveled at how realistic it all seemed (even if it's now a bit farther off). Of course, there were a few anachronisms -- the PanAm shuttle flight, or the Bell System videophone.

    The only anachronism that _really_ rang false, though, was later in the film, when HAL begins to show signs of trouble. Both the ground crew and the astronauts are initially dumbfounded at the idea that their computer could possibly be having a software malfunction.

    Imagine that. Being _surprised_ that a piece of software could have glitches. Wouldn't that be a nice world to live in? :)

  • duh. the same on 8.30

  • The book came first (Score:4)

    by Grant Elliott ( 132633 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @05:34PM (#1423267)
    First of all, the entire story grew out of "The Sentinel," written by Clarke in 1948. A number of other stories also contributed to the final work.

    In addition, the actual novel of 2001 was, in fact, written prior to the movie. I quote from the introduction to the 25th Anniversary Edition:

    "...before we embarked on the drudgery of the script, we let our imaginations soar freely by writing a complete novel, from which we would later derive a script... This is more or less the way it worked out, though toward the end novel and screenplay were being written simultaneously, with feedback in both directions."

    Clarke goes on to mention that he only wrote about 2/3 of the novel at this time and wrote the end during production of the film.

    You are correct entirely in that, though some aspects simply could not be conveyed in film, Kubrick left many intentionally vague, resulting in a film that is truly a work of art. Clarke said it best. "If you understand 2001 on the first viewing, we will have failed."
  • The pace is ridiculously slow, with a lot of repetition and really long boring space scenes.
    While I'm sure the effects (look! people sitting upside-down!) were spectacular in their day,
    to a contemporary viewer such as myself they register as a big fat so-what.


    Well, as someone who was NOT raised on MTV and other media targeted at folks with 5 minute attention spans, (I'm 37) I have to disagree the opinion that is was ridiculously slow.
    (not meant as a jab at you)
    I felt the space scenes were very well done and showed the space craft's landing in a realistic fashion.
    Inertia is not something you bleed off in a split second - not if you want to keep your passengers alive.

    The design of having the docking bay on the space station NOT spinning counter to the rotation
    and forcing the shuttle to spin instead - was just the result of the application of good ol' K.I.S.S.

    They don't have to worry about the energy costs to keep the docking bay rotating - or any maintenance on the mechanicals involved.
    True - it was not all action adventure and lots of bodies and blood everywhere (and requisite bouncing bimbos) but then it never pretended to be.

    I must say I am glad I am not a contemporary viewer, considering the amount of garbage on nowadays aimed at that audience.

  • That *would* be a great world to live in! However, you have to realize that in the mid 70's when the movie was made, your avarage 'monolithic kernel' was probably only a couple of KB at most. Bascially, it was either sink or swim, as codes were so much simpler then. Most of the time, programs either worked 100% of the time or did not work at all. At least that's what the avarage terminal user *thought*...
    ------------------------------------ --

  • 2001? What a rip off! (Score:4)

    by CmdrT4c0 ( 266433 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @05:46PM (#1423270) Homepage
    I can't believe how much people are in love with 2001. I saw it for the first time last week on video. People! Wake up!

    This movie is nothing more than a cheap, poorly made rip-off of Mission to Mars [marsnews.com], only without the good acting and the pleasant special effects. The worst thing about it was the computer Al didn't do anything. It just sat there and tried to kill the dude by locking him outside.

    And when Al the Computer died, all it did was sing a song. Zzzzzzzzz....Maybe I'm missing something, but this movie was boring. I mean, if they're going to rip off Mission to Mars in this direct-to-video release, they should at least try to fix some of the more boring elements of Mission to Mars.

    Oh, and whats up with that lame classical music?

    Sigh...

  • It is one of three or four great movies about AI. The others being "Terminator," "War Games," and "The Matrix."

    Not to drift too far off-topic, but... I would add to that mix, "Blade Runner."

    It's not a movie that you would usually think about when you try to think of a "movie about AI," but it's pretty obvious that it is.

    It's also interesting to note that movies about AI are never really about AI, per se. They're really about humans. And I think Blade Runner tackles the subject so directly (since replicants are basically identical to humans) that we forget they're just "machines."

    Movies "about AI," too often, are about human frailty, or hubris. Except maybe...

    At the risk of getting moderated "off-topic," did anyone see "The Bicentennial Man?"

    --

  • <all caps>All yuor moons are belong to us!!</all caps>

    stupid lameness filter....

    ....

  • I have a simple theory. What if we look at the Monolith as being representational of the confirmed existence of Dark Matter? I watched a show on Discovery Channel a few weeks ago that explained the fact that the universe is actually expanding at a propelled rate of speed. The cause: Dark Matter. What is it? No one knows. They beleive the Vacuum of space actuall takes a form that is completely colorless, has no physical properties what so ever, and cannot be detected by any current means. So how do they know? They feel it is the proverbial glue that holds the universe together and propels it essentially. It is the oppsite that is the negative. It is the dark and the light. it could very well be the beginning and the end. Yet it has no detectable presence. It's just there. It becomes more and more powerful and it's characteristics strengthened in the depths of deep space. Essentially, the further from the supposed source of all known beginning. (for those who subscribe to the big bang universe theory) it has also now been confirmed that there is no pattern in the universes axpansion. At one point they thought it to be relatively circular or should I say Globular. As most things in space are represented. They have no idea which way it's moving, at what rate, and where the destination may be. The obvious current answer most suited to the question: Dark Matter. Monolith.

    A great many thanks to Kubrick and Clark for opening my eyes at the age of three or four when I first saw the movie. I didn't fully understand it then. Never would I claim to fully understand it now, but at least I can comprehend and Imagine as they did.


    .
  • The 2001 rerelease date was originally scheduled for December 31, 2000. This was in accordance with Kubrick's wishes as stated in the Hollywood Reporter on March 11, 1999. Now Warner Brothers is letting everybody down by 'pushing back' the rerelease date to Spring 2001. Any negative publicity this decision can get is good. There is no doubt, absolutely no doubt, that if Kubrick was still alive this would not happen. As a staunch Kubrick follower, I must spread the word to at least voice my disapproval.
  • Hey, wasn't that HAL 9000? Not Al. It was bad sectors man! Dude was in there trying to drop new cartidges in and the thing lost it's mind!

    And oh yeah, the movie came out like thirty + years ago. It was and still is so far ahead of it's time. it looks like Mission to Mars, albeit a great movie, was closely related to the story line of that book "...And the Moon Be Still As Bright" [wsu.edu](study guide) by Ray Bradbury


    .
  • The Movie [imdb.com]. It seems very clear to me, having watched the original in a real theater [indianarep.com] in Super-Cinerama [brad.ac.uk]/Super Panavision [widescreenmuseum.com] 70 that the various mutiliations to get it down to television haven't helped it. All the same, it was 1966-1968 and we'd yet to land on the moon. Look at the images they thought that they'd see and what ultimately was seen on the moon. They came damn close. So look at the special effects and understand that Star Wars [starwars.com] was still 9 years off and doesn't look nearly as functional.

    Perhaps those of you who don't get it should look at what you have for an imagination and what you have for an attention span [akrongeneral.org]. This is a thinking person's movie, not a movie that will whack you over the head with "get it, moron!". Further, until you've made a movie and dealt with all the problems that come with one, ponder what you say. This was a spectacular thing that we're still talking about 32 years later.

    The Technology [indelibleinc.com]. My bigger bitch is with the people here that bitch about the technology. Perhaps you've been standing behind the door, but it is you and I that make the technology happen. If we want video phones [att.com] then we should get off our collective asses and code the damn things up.

    And, if we want the things this movie guessed would happen, they're not beyond the edge of our technology. All it takes is a political will to do these things and it will happen. What happened to the US space program, post Apollo 11 [nasa.gov], can only be considered a travesty. There was a viable team of very smart, can-do people that attained a spectacular goal. What did we did to the team? We laid most of them off and said, 'thanks guys'. That NASA was capable of all sorts of cool things but instead the press and hence the country looked at Vietnam [utexas.edu] instead.

    So if you want the BIG technology this vision of the future offers, argue for it with your government critters. They will listen if you will take the time to clearly state the case. They're actually there to do the right thing, if only they can figure out what that is.

    --Multics

    P.S. don't whine at me about the Space Shuttle [nasa.gov] either. They went from an Apollo command module (think row-boat) to a reusable space truck (think modern cargo ship) in one step. They're allowed to have made (and continue to make) some blunders along the way -- after all this is rocket science.

  • Wrong movie.
  • Perhaps a nice US member of the Slashdot community will create DivX's for everyone else? :)

    Please? :))

  • You also must remember that HAL was "taught" instead of programmed, and was not your run of the mill kernel based computer. It had a near human level of intelligence. In the world of 2001, this type of computer may have had a extremely low failure rate.

    -Ellis
  • Oh, and that "10 minutes of random flashing color." That sequence lasts only a few minutes and is one of the most famous scenes in movie history.

    Actully, I watched the film just last week, and took a quick glance at my watch as it started. It actully IS just over 10 minutes! I'm not against it though, I love it, and the entire film (and books), however, it does actully go for 10 minutes.

  • As someone who WAS raised on MTV and other such abominations, I'd also like to say that I didn't think 2001 was a particularly slow-moving film. I had seen it at least 20 times without reading the book (I enjoyed it even though I only partially understood it), and I have seen it a number of times after reading the book.

    The science fiction genre does not have to mean action / adventure. Not every scifi movie has to have a big laser fight or chase scene, and 2001 certainly didn't need anything like that to be a great film.
  • I actually am a big Win2000 fan (see my previous posts), but I don't like MS as a company.
  • I think I missed the point of the book, too. I think all the food was blue because they couldn't tell what food was supposed to look like? And it tasted just like what Bowman expected.

    And the 'monolith' was sitting in his cube contemplating the beauty of the ratio of the sides 1:4:9... as if when we understood that it would be revealed to us just how advanced the monoliths were.

    There seemed to have been some major disconnects btwn the book and the movie. Of course Kubrick has a great imagination, dwarfed only by his ego, so I am told.

    Of course its a lot harder to read the book on LSD, so I'm told. :)

    But as for the long, drawn-out parts. It truly is a different mindset today than it was then. Has anyone seen THX1138? Now there is another good example of beauty in vapid and rambling serial seeming non-sequiturs.

  • The book and the movie are intertwined. A composite piece of art. They were created together, and should be appreciated so.
  • "The Bicentennial Man" seems more about how humans can't think about immortality. and will not think about unlimited lifetime. even when it is given to them, humans will not exept the idea of unlimited life. i bet that TBM was poorly adapted into a moive, will have to read the book.


    nmarshall

    The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
  • According to the story, a HAL 9000 had never made a mistake.

    --
  • It is one of three or four great movies about AI. The others being "Terminator," "War Games," and "The Matrix."

    I certainly wouldn't rank The Matrix among those. While technically well-done, the preposterousness of the plot really grated on me. The machines were keeping humans around as some sort of power source. And humans had to be kept conscious (though occupying a pseudo-reality) to boot. Sheesh. At least 2001 had a storyline that was plausible. Now if someone would just make a movie out of Rendezvous With Rama ...

  • Re:You may have missed the point (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You obviously never read the book. Though the book and the movie where developed essentially at the same time, there are some significant variations (most notably that Discovery is headed for Saturn in the book). Kubrick did a spectacular job on the movie, especially considering technology of the time, but some aspects of Clarke's epic vision elude capture in this medium. Sadly, most people who only watch the movie completely miss the point of many scenes.
    [snip]

    I received a copy of the video as a christmas present this year, and am watching it as I type. I've got to disagree with some of the stuff you said above.

    I'm going to be a bit rude here. If you think the most significant difference between the movie and the book is the location of the third monolith, you weren't paying attention to the movie. I actually wish I had never read the book, so I didn't have the preconceptions it introduced.

    First, the movie is positively dripping with symbolistic elements, which the book largely lacks, and whatever sense can be extracted from the movie is in these symbols. Something I just now noticed is that almost every scene in the first half of the movie involves food in some way. Don't laugh, it's true! The leopard eating the ape, the ape eating the pig thing, the food service on the flight out to the space station, the conversation with the Russians (held in the space station's restaurant), the food service on the shuttle out to the moon, the sandwiches served on the bus out to the monolith site (quote: "What kind of sandwich you want?" "You got ham in there?"), and then the Jupiter mission crew eating while watching the BBC interview. I've got no idea what this means, but there's too much eating going on in the first half of the movie (eating only appears once in the second half, and I'll get to that) for it to be just coincidental. Characters in the book eat, certainly, but there's got to be some reason why Kubrick, in his adaptation, put such an emphasis on it.

    Hm. I'm just brainstorming here, but I'm guessing that part of this is to show continuity between the apes and modern society. This ties in with that jump-cut between the bone and the missile satellite. The monolith introduced technology to the apes -- the apes used it to get food and kill each other -- the history of human society has been the history of the use of technology to get food and kill each other. The difference here, I suppose, is a matter of emphasis. In the book, getting food and killing each other was the starting point of technological progress, while in the movie Kubrick seemed to be saying (if I'm not reading too much into this) that all progress, no matter how complex, is nothing more than a method for getting food and killing each other.

    The only time that a character eats in the second half of the movie is when old Bowman, in the hotel sequence, eats that mushy stuff and knocks his wineglass off the table. I'm certain there's heavy symbolism wrapped up in the whole breaking of the wineglass thing (wasn't Kubrick jewish?), but I don't know enough to get into that. I guess you can see it as Bowman (and, by extension, humanity) giving up the technology they were taught by the first monolith and preparing for the next jump. I don't know if you can see it as the "end of violence," or anything like that, though. After all, at the start of the movie it was the monolith itself that had introduced the "original sin," so to speak. I don't know, what I'm trying to get at here is that the movie is much more pessimistic in tone than the book.

    Hm, I think I'm going to introduce my point, my central thesis now (this is formatted poorly, but what the fuck, it's not like I'm going to be graded on it or anything). Kubrick (and Clarke, though I don't remember exactly how much emphasis he put on it) sets up HAL as the "final challenge" humanity has to face. Before being allowed to reach the next stage, Bowman has to literally defeat the ultimate embodiment of technology, by killing HAL. Fine as it goes, but there's (AFAICT) a difference between the book and the movie in the mechanism used to set up this face-off between Bowman and HAL. Clarke's HAL flips out because he has to lie to the crew about the purpose of the mission. That explanation doesn't really fly in the movie, where the crew was never shown to be the slightest bit curious about the ultimate purpose of the mission. Reading HAL's intentions is... well, tricky, to say the least, but I'm guessing that HAL guessed what the monolith was up to. I think he wanted to enter the monolith himself :) And the only reason Bowman got the "prize" was because he was better at violence than the other child of the monolith's manipulations.

    Bah, this is long enough already. Anyway, don't try to use the book as a gloss for the movie. They're totally different works. Kubrick was much much more pessimistic than Clarke, and it shows through in the two different versions of 2001.

  • Hey! You must be young 'cos you missed some good old ones: Demon Seed and The Forbin Project. Check them out on IMDB. They blow away all 4 of your suggestions as I'll hope you'll be pleased to find when you get hold of them! (As movies they're not better than 2001 but they represent AI wonderfully!)
    --
  • The space station would have to be pretty big to be made to rotate for artificial gravity. If it is not big enough, the crew would puke their guts out due to the Coriolis acceleration that messes up your equilibrium.

  • Re:Unfulfilled projections (Score:4)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @07:43PM (#1423291) Journal
    Part of the reason these things have not taken place is that technology has not developed in the way previously envisioned. Take computers for example.

    Although 2001 does define and crystalize for many the first coherent thoughts of what an intelligent compututer would be like.

    Another element is the perverse truth that there has been no real advance in social sciences. This is important because a more peaceful and rational world would have more resources for "non-essentials" like space exploration.

    (The only real advances in the social sciences have been in the fields of advertising, public relations, and political spin. That is where the money is.)

  • The whole HAL scheme with the intelligent computer going bad and then terrorizing the humans is nothing but a high gloss ripoff of Colossus: The Forbin Project.

    Many of the best individual scenes, like the scheming to disconnect HAL are taken directly from Colossus.

    If you liked the monkees and the excavation of monoliths and space station stuff, that's one thing. But the focus on HAL in reminiscenes of 2001 is silly since it was done better both before and after.

  • You probably already know, but didn't list, all of other fatal flaws that "The Matrix" has. The number of implausible premises is a function of how long you spend thinking about the movie, and how much you know (or can guess) about the physics, computers, human nature, logic, philosophy, baking cookies, etc. The number of holes is the plot is legendary. The level of sustained, meaningless violence is so high that is goes beyond ultraviolence and becomes porn in the true sense: pure spectacle with zero content. The movie is visually arresting and brilliantly stylish, but after half an hour this too begins to work against it because you realize that the underlying message is "There is no problem so difficult that it can't be solved by wearing even cooler clothes." And then there is Keanu Reeves.

    So what then, it's just a bad move, right? No! It is a movie that is intellectually stimulating and provocative and will have an influence that lasts for a generation. It is as much a culture-bearing artifact of the modern geek culture as "2001," or _On The Road_ were in their times.

    But why? The movie looks self-indulgent, empty and hollow on its surface, and the closer you look, the more crap you find. So why does this bad movie work so well?

  • I won't give him (too much) props about inventing the sattelite. I'm sure about 500 ppl already have but anyway
    What I really dig about him is that in the book 3001 he took technology even farther. The one thing that seemed within reach was how capitalism lead to true world peace through the commercialism of spy information. /Everthing/ was corporatly sponsored, especialy most things governments try to keep secret like spy satelites. I remember seeing a post about something very much like that here on /. already (no not the amsat thing, a little further back)

    Of course he also wrote this before the MPAA/RIAA ever did more then hand out ratings on movies.
    "Me Ted"
  • Perhaps not in widespread use, but we do have some videophone use that is growing - a lot of people now use webcams in that way, and I'm pretty sure a number of businesses have videophone enabled conference rooms (at least mine does).

    I'd agree they aren't as widespread in use as in 2001, but they are there and they are not really leading egde anymore.
  • haha
    Who the fuck moderated that insightful?

    --
  • But the preposterousness of the Terminator plot passes muster? Annoying movie pedants always seem to forget that it's fiction. As in science fiction. I'm sure that giant monolith out there in Jupiter's orbit is quite plausible.

    --

  • Flying cars? Where are the flying cars?

    So a film makes unrelistic predictions, and you are dissapointed that they haven't come true? I'm dissapointed I drank a Heinnekin and didn't end up with the hot chick in the TV commercial. Science and technology is developing at least as fast as it ever has before. 2001 completely missed nanotech & genetic engineering. Which do you think will be more important in the future of humankind: nanobots or videophones?
  • Blade Runner! I'm with ya' babe. That is an all time great movie, too, regardless of whether its a movie about AI or not (an I agree, I think it is.)

    It's also one of those "as good as he ever got" movies, where a B-grade actor rises far above his normal levels of mediocre talent to deliver that one great performance. Rutger Hauer never got any better.

    --

  • Because the best movies are ones that really make you think, and don't waste time with pedantic details of science (though it can be a nice touch when they do worry a bit about them). The key is that the plot of "Matrix" did not really hinge on any of the fundamental flaws - for instance, as many have said the computers might have been keeping us alive to harness computational power. Whatever, at the core it was a movie about what is real and how belief affects reality.

    In a way the flaws help to actually push you closer to understanding the big picture and story and dwell less on the details as one might be prone to do in a Sci Fi movie.
  • If you are a person with a more active imagination who prefers spending more time, reading more details and thinking critically on the ideas, the book probably does it for you. The abstract "story", independent of words or images, is more of a stepchild of them both.
    Lies. The "abstract story" behind the book is an optimistic take on mankind's future progress, involving an advanced "caretaker" civilization. The "abstract story" (such as it is) behind the movie is a pessimistic musing on the overall meanness and nastiness of the human race (and possibly of the universe itself, depending on how you see the Monolith). And I take objection to your speculation on who will prefer which "version" of the "story," since IMO most people outside the /. /sci-fi community think the movie's a masterpiece and the book's tripe. I propose an alternate decision procedure: If you're into escapist Clarke/Asimov period sci-fi, you'll like the book, if you're into film, and can handle vagueness and ambiguity, you'll like the movie.
    --
    "HORSE."
  • Apparently whoever moderated you up is about as young and uninformed as you. Not really your fault though, you had to have been born early enough to have seen the movie first run with the mindset a person living then would have had to properly appreciate it. It's sort of like someone who wasn't even born when John Lennon was killed trying to fully appreciate the cultural atomic bomb that went off when the Beatles first single was released December 26, 1963. If you didn't live through it, there's no way you're going to fully understand what it was like. Just the way that it is.
  • I was working A Clockwork Orange the other day and saw something interesting. When Alex is at the record shop, if you look bellow the counter the soundtrack for 2001 is on the shelf.

  • 1) We have no magnificent space stations in orbit, and one is not in sight. We do have a a couple of pathetic wannabees, but that's that.


    2) We have no regular passenger shuttle flights from Earth to a super space station.

    3) We have no moon base, and no chances of getting one in the reasonably forseeable future.
    [snip]
    6) We have no manned spaceflights beyond a few hundred kilometers above the Earth's surface.

    7) We have no videophones.

    8) We have no instantaneous, cheap videophone connections from orbit.

    9) We have no BBC-12.

    So, basically, you're disappointed that people don't want this stuff enough to pay for it. Damn those people, wanting to eat and stuff. Those bastards!


    ---
  • I hated it when the astronaut jumps from the little maintenance drone back into the space station by holding his breath in space with no suit!!!!!ARGRGRGGRGGGGGGG COME ON!!!!

    Otherwise the movie is awesome...




  • If you rot -1 HAL, you get IBM.

  • Remake? Would you remake The Wizard of Oz? In 1999 I read a rumor that Kubrick was considering redoing some of the visuals for a re-release in (when else?) 2001, but beyond Kubrick "Lucasizing" his masterpiece, I would rather it be left alone, never mind being "remade". The visuals stand to this day ... achieved the only way possible, with insanely big models (the Discovery model was sixty feet long!).

    One thing would be amusing, however: updating the product placement logos. PanAm (rest in piece) becomes American Airlines (or did Trumbull do that already with Silent Running?), Howard Johnson becomes Days Inn, etc. Oddly enough, IBM's logo is essentially the same, and I am pretty sure that Lou Gestner would be delighted to have the company highlighted this time around. Now everyone knows what a computer is ... no more boogie monster with the IBM logo.

    During production, Clarke kept revising the novelisation of the screenplay, but at almost two years into the effort, had to submit a proof to the publisher so they could begin creating layout galleys for printing. Shortly after that, the effects team (Trumbull, Dykstra) told Kubrick that they just couldn't get the Saturn visuals to work, and Kubrick was forced to take the film's conclusion to Jupiter instead. That's why the novel goes to Saturn, not Jupiter! Also (another side disagreement) Clarke moved HALs birthday to 1997 from 1992, figuring that no one would go to Jupiter/Saturn with an out dated computer. The NASA Space Shuttle still uses 1970s era computers!

  • Re:The only thing I hated was..... (Score:3)

    by Rombuu ( 22914 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2000 @09:39PM (#1423308)
    Well, supposedly you can survive a short interval in space without a spacesuit.... the only reference I can find to this on the web quickly is here [straightdope.com], but it sounds pretty beliveable to me.
  • GATTACA, possibly. Even if the world doesn't turn out the way the film portrays (as I think it won't), it is a very well-made film that promotes introspection. Interesting non-sequeter, but the title of the film is composed entirely of nucleotide bases. -A6
  • It had aliens!

    What do you think the black monolith was? And if you were stating that kids in 20 years will not understand that, then that has all ready happened.

    Will
  • Another element is the perverse truth that there has been no real advance in social sciences. This is important because a more peaceful and rational world would have more resources for "non-essentials" like space exploration.

    Surely I'm not the only one who detects a bit of heavy-handed authoritarianism and manipulation in Kubrick's portrayal of the actions of H. Floyd in "2001" and the organization which he represents?

    Then again, maybe I am.

    I'm not certain that "2001" really demonstrated a world more peaceful or rational than the one we face in the coming year -- it really wasn't the focus of the film (it was, moreso, for the subpar sequel, "2010") so there are too few data points with which to work. However, the few glimpses of the world framing the narrative (or, at least the ones I saw), suggest a world that was far from at peace with itself or altogether rational.

    If anything, the exploration depicted in "2001" was carried out for reasons far from "non-essential" in nature ... again, another thread picked up by the sequel and hammered home a bit too overtly.

  • Almost everything about _2001_ which has lodged in the public consciousness--HAL's calm, axe-murderer voice (Douglas Rain); the precise appearance of the monolith; the use of the music of Strauss, Ligeti, &c.; the match cut from the thrown bone to the orbiting satellite--all of these things were Kubrick's devices.

    I've read "The Sentinel", and I've read THE LOST WORLDS OF 2001. Clarke contributed the skeleton of the plot--the manipulation of the development of the forerunners of man (q.v. "Encounter in the Dawn"), the alien artifact planted on the Moon (q.v. "The Sentinel"), the voyage to the outer solar system which goes horribly wrong (q.v. LOST WORLDS). The idea of HAL as the psychotic artificial intelligence was not, as I recall, present in any of the drafts anthologized in LOST WORLDS. Clarke's original conception (of a benevolent AI named "Athene") was quite different from what Kubrick eventually delivered.

    Clarke also contributed his drab, talky literary style; in the first third of the movie, Kubrick spends perhaps twenty minutes delivering, with not a single word, what required chapters of exposition for Clarke--the concise link between the monolith, incipient "man-ape" intelligence, carnivorism, and murder.

    Any idea that Clarke is chiefly responsible for _2001_'s greatness need only witness the mediocrity of _2010_ and especially _2061_.

    hyacinthus.
  • It seems to me that the only reason we haven't progessed to Kubrick's vision is energy - or our inability to harness it. It currently takes an incredible amount of fuel to luanch a payload into orbit. And it is extremely expensive.

    We need to find/harness cheap, plentiful, reliable and (hopefully) environmentally friendly fuel. Then we could afford to take vacations in space. Of course that still seems pretty far off considering that we just had rolling blackouts here in California.

  • Well, according to IMDB, 2001 was released in 1968, while Colossus: The Forbin Project came out in 1969. I suppose you could argue that Colossus went online in the 1980's, but HAL wasn't "born" until 1997.

    I seriously doubt that D.F. Jones' publication of the novel Colossus in 1966 affected Kubrick and Clarke who began production of 2001 in 1965. Clarke and Kubrick met in April 1964, and quickly agreed on The Sentinel as a cornerstone. I don't know when the computer-run-amuck idea came about, but excerpts from Clarke's log, quoted in the excellent The Lost Worlds of 2001 (1972, Signet) state:

    August 6 [1964]. Stanley suggests that we make the computer female and call her Athena.

    May 3 [1965]. Finished first draft of the runaway antenna sequence.
    So it seems fairly certain that this predates Colossus.
  • I think the ONLY movie that Brion James didn't play some bad-guy thug was as a movie exec in The Player. He wasn't convincing at all. Heh
  • may well have been but the argument was over whether or not 2001 was a good movie not over whether it was a good movie if you've read the book.
  • Actually, this is the only movie I can think of that got it right. See James Oberg's page on space myths [jamesoberg.com] and scroll down to "Blow Up."

  • Read the 2001, 2010, 2061 and 3001 paperbacks and check out the author's notes. Clarke talks about various predictions he made that later explorations either confirmed or established the plausibility of them.

    Also, the screenplay and book for 2001 were written at the same time, and while Kubrick did direct, the movie was a very close Kubrick/Clarke collaboration.

    And don't forget that, as is usual in the case, Clarke was laughed at for his geosynchronous communications satellite idea. Maybe he should have patented it?

  • I think our moderators apparently need a bit of mental adjustments if they list this post as "Insightful" ;) BTW, did anyone else notice that the whole cryostasis thing was stolen from the "Aliens" series? Shame shame... it's a wonder anyone sees Kubrick as if he was some sort of visionary. We all know he ripped off the whole vehicles-in-space thing from the Wing Commander movie.
  • Rather glum conclusion :-) But there are a few nice things that we have that the movie does not, as I shall explain later on.

    In particular, AI has proved to be a *much* more difficult problem than had been imagined a few decades ago. HAL 9000 could easily pass a very broad version of the Turing Test; the most that has been done in real life is to pass in very specialized domains. About Turing himself, he predicted both 10^9 bits of RAM being common and passing the Turing Test in 50 years; those 50 years have passed, and while the first is common, the second is not.

    Other things, like advanced spaceflight, have not happened out of lack of political will.

    However, we do have several things that the movie did not, as Donald Norman has pointed out. User interfaces are much improved. Instead of a lot of separate screens, we have screens that display virtual screens, which can overlap and which can be moved and resized at will. Furthermore, typewriter-style keyboards have been very successful at being generic sets of control buttons; most of the numerous specialized buttons in the movie are unnecessary.

    Furthermore, we have varieties of computer entertainment that the movie has no hint of, such as 3D-graphics virtual-world games. Thus, an alternative to commanding very stylized armies on a very stylized battlefield, which is chess, would be to command armies on a battlefield with everything looking and acting very real-world (Myth or Warcraft/Starcraft). But it may be difficult to picture obituaries like "Dave rides HAL's rocket" or "HAL chews on Dave's boomstick".

    But even in such games, it is very apparent that the AI is far behind HAL's standards. For example, I've found that a usually successful tactic is to attract an enemy's attention and then retreat around a corner. That enemy will usually walk right into that trap.
  • Unless your objection is that he holds his breath rather than breathing all the way out before blowing the hatch, then you don't have too much to complain about.

    People can survive around 30 seconds in pure vacuum as long as they open their airways to let the pressure equalize down to zero (otherwise they get an expansion injuries similar to, but muxh worse than, a scuba diver who holds her breath while ascending).

    In a vacuum, your lungs no longer have air to absorb oxygen from, but the O2 in your blood stream keeps you conscious for around 30 seconds before you conk out. Certainly long enough to sneak up behind a psychotic paranoid computer.

    People exploding from the eyeballs - now that is science fiction.

  • Yes, a lot of what's in the movie doesn't exist in reality, but, save for an artificially intelligent computer, all of those COULD have been if politicians had the courage to say "Let's climb that mountain, because it's there!" (like Kennedy did with Apollo), or enough citizens were unslothful enough to prod their elected officials into action ("action," in this case, being to take the fscking foot off the break pedal and ditch the governmental space oligopoly that keeps us on the ground as effectively as gravity does). That neither has happened isn't a fault of the technology, or the dreamers, but the status quo (maybe even intentionally, if you're a conspiratorial sort).

    As a misanthropic sort, I can't say I'm terribly surprised that it's people who've let humanity down. I just pray there will never come a day where humanity dies out because we never bothered to leave the cradle.
  • I suppose a discussion of the 2001 wouldn't be complete without someone bringing up that tired old saw about "HAL" being 1 letter ahead of "IBM".

    Even if it's a load of crap that pretty much everyone involved with the story (both movie and book) has been trying to dispell since its initial release, over 30 years ago.

  • I don't think so. The Europian version of the CNN website [cnn.com] does carry a similar story [cnn.com], but does not mention any air times. Their is also no mention of this on the CNN International [cnn.com] website.

    So a DivX would be nice.

  • I don't find 2001 way too long and boring. Beauty, is after all, in the eye of the beholder! 2001, IMHO is a masterpiece. It really DOES make you feel the loneliness and remoteness of space. I've not seen any other space movie that has managed to capture that feeling.

    While some of the effects are dated - I find the ship scenes look a lot more realistic than today's computer generated special effects. For some reason, modern special effects look...well, a lot more contrived than the old models did.


  • We need to find/harness cheap, plentiful, reliable and (hopefully) environmentally friendly fuel. Then we could afford to take vacations in space.Of course that still seems pretty far off considering that we just had rolling blackouts here in California.


    Solar is the obvious answer! Space-based solar power systems are potentially (1) plentiful - the sun puts out about a billion times more power than Earth ever sees, (2) reliable - sun's always shining out there, (3) environmentally friendly - if we can manufacture the power systems off-planet (eg. on the moon or asteroids) then the only thing Earth ever needs is the power receiving and distribution stations - absolutely minimal environmental cost.

    The only problem is the "cheaply" issue - various estimates range from $7 billion to $100 billion to get a lunar solar cell production system and energy distribution system started. But once active production is functional, the allocated and marginal cost per kWh of received power could be much lower than it is anywhere on earth today.

    The real problem is not energy, but politics - and the very ambgiuous rights situation on the moon and elsewhere - various U.N. treaties seem to preclude commercial exploitation, and the big companies that could make a lot of money from this aren't willing to risk anything under the current regime.
  • My DOB is on my Web pages. Figure it out.
    --
  • I stand corrected. Thanks.
    --
  • For a long time, I've thought that the most interesting aspect of both SF and Fantasy is that they allow us to investigate aspects of humanity, isolated from the limitations of current society and technology. The Matrix -- beyond it's stunning special effects goes deeply into that space. It explores the question of "how do our preconceptions of ourselves and our abilities limit what we can actually accomplish?"

    IMO, the central plotline of The Matrix seems to be around getting Neo to let go of his preconceptions of the limits of reality and his ability to affect it. The climax occurs when he has the 'breakthrough' in realizing just how far he'd been constrained by his taught limitations.

    The questions which it raises are: Where in my life have my own preconceptions of myself and others been limiting what we've been able to accomplish? and: What is it going to take for me to push myself past that point? The big rushes of the movie actually occur when Neo has those breakthroughs (e.g. Choosing the pill, training with Mobeus, the final fight scene). Each breakthrough opens up a brand new 'realm of possibilities'.

    Where would you like to have your breakthrough today?
    `ø,,ø!

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