Slashdot Mirror
2001: A Space Prophecy
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."
If I seem to recall it correctly it was Sir Arthur C. Clarke's vision.
Trust the source!
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
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.
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.
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 is wonderful but let's not try to pretend that Clarke is responsible for the film -- it was Stanley Kubrick who made the film, and as he also made another of my all-time top five Doctor Strangelove (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.
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If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
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.
I ate my sig.
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.
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Xenu loves you!
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?
Nothing like an intelligent, well-thought out, accurate, non-libelous comment, is there?
I wonder ever if someone will make a movie where the smart 'patooters don't kill us?
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You sure got a purty mouth...
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.
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Codeala - Just another mindless drone
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 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.
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
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.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
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!
Hey, Mom! Is it beer, yet?
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...
Monkey lover...
From the linked-to CNN page:
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 about "the pictures and sounds having been digitally enhanced."
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
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.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
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? :)
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
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."
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
This movie is nothing more than a cheap, poorly made rip-off of Mission to Mars, 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...
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.
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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.
Checkout taccom my worl war II simulator
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. 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. 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 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, 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 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 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.
I actually am a big Win2000 fan (see my previous posts), but I don't like MS as a company.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
The book and the movie are intertwined. A composite piece of art. They were created together, and should be appreciated so.
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 ...
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.
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 /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)
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.
Of course he also wrote this before the MPAA/RIAA ever did more then hand out ratings on movies.
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
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...
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. --Robert Benchley
If you rot -1 HAL, you get IBM.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
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.
(g, d, & rlh)
More than enough to hit the emergency "close lock and fill with air" button. Mind you, many of the other side effects of vacuum exposure, like subcutaneous hemorrages, extreme frostbite, etc, weren't shown in 2001, but are quite likely in any real-life short-term vacuum exposure.
Another Clarke novel I'd love to see as a movie is "A Fall of Moondust".
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
I think you're talking about '2061', the third book in the trilogy (after '2001' and '2010', of course). '3001' is the title of its epilogue, if I remember right.
Something that not many people catch, but that is definatly there in the book, is one of the first examples I have seen of the Hypertext idea. In the book, Dr. Floyd is reading a news release on the Aries between the space station and the moon. He taps a link on the screen to get more in depth information on a particular story.
There may be other examples earlier, but this is the earliest I have seen the concept of the Hypertext link brought forth.
"42"
The above should be moderated to +5 informative!
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.
Energy: time to change the picture.
I wonder if the microsloth people came up with that term just to say "The HAL" I'd moderate myself off-topic if I could ;-p
My DOB is on my Web pages. Figure it out.
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Xenu loves you!
I stand corrected. Thanks.
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Xenu loves you!
Frankly, "2001" was a bunch of baloney. (If you aren't familiar with US colloquialisms, that means the theme was nonsense.) Yeah, if you have a certain philosophical belief, you would think that "2001" is one of the greatest movies ever written. However, even a true believer has to face the fact that this movie has little bearing to the reality we witness--he just won't know the reason for that. The reason is that the premise of the movie is nonsense, and the theme is nonsense. Of course, my comment won't be popular; the world has been sold (the better term would be "brainwashed by") the Materialistic nonsense that is the core of "2001." Besides that, the meaning it assigns to life is ultimately worthless to humanity. I will grant that the movie is aesthetically-pleasing--which simply means that you can wrap anything to make it look pretty. I doubt that I have ever seen a visually- or technically-superior movie. I suspect that most people watching it don't have a clue of the extent of the storytelling genius that is manifested in front of them ... but, then, most people pay very little attention to the movies they watch.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Well, Microsoft did ROT+1 VMS to get WNT...
So whenever you find yourself locked out of a spaceship by some paranoid AI...grab your towel and Don't Panic!