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Comparing Clarke/Kubrick's 2001 To Now
angkor wrote us about a recent Economist article
that explores and compares the differences between Clarke/Kubrick's vision of 2001, and what we've got. Of course, I'd point out that the literary one wasn't meant to be a literal 2001; but this an interesting comparasion nonetheless.
...apes, mastering primitive tools for the first time. Cut to 2001.
A space station orbits the earth.
Not entirely relevent, but the first image from 2001 that wasn't
prehistoric, was actually a "space bomb", not a space ship or a
space station as is often thought. Cinematically, this makes more
sense as it links prehistoric man to futuristic man with the
concept of violence.
If you want a different view, read Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines. He's a smart guy, whos won several prestigious awards. The National Medal of Technology and The Lemelson-MIT prize.
It would seem the posts (other than the typical troll/spam) completely miss the meaning of the book. Much like one of his previous masterpieces (I think *very* highly of the philosophical teachings of Clarke), "Childhood's End", "2001: A Space Odyssey" used technology only as a subtext.
The fact that the environment of 2001 includes a world where computers are "intelligent" is only presented to illustrate the evolution not only of Humans, but as Humans-As-Gods.
The two most important scenes in the movie (which by the way are *far* more insightful in the book, as almost all book-to-movie translations are) are the following:
In the opening chapter, "The Dawn Of Man", an ape looks upon a pile of armadillo bones. This is nothing new, but the ape has something happen to him that has never happened before in the history of the Earth: The ape has an insight.
Picking up a bone, it flops in his wrist and hits some others. The ape picks it up again, and instead of it flopping by accident, he *lets* it flop in his wrist, seeing it hit the other bones and making them jump. This was a beautiful literary demonstration of the spark of intelligence happening in an otherwise "merely-sentient" being.
A few scenes later, in a triumph of the knowledge and abilities gained by discovering this new tool, and indeed, the ability to use tools at all, an ape after winning a fight for terratory hurls the weapon used (the bone) into the air. The camera pans up slowly with the rising bone, and pans back down with the falling spacecraft as it floats in space.
The beautiful imagination of Clarke and the wonderful cinematography of Kubrick, without even so much as dialogue, make a startling presentation of how from a tiny spark of insight, and a *lot* of time, Human Beings have evolved to the point where they are able to move even beyond their own world.
The final scene ("Jupiter, and Beyond the Infinite"), that of Cmdr. Dave Bowman in a white room, completes the progression of evolution as Clarke intended to explain it in his book:
Bowman, an evolved ape, a Human Being capable of venturing out beyond his own world, finds himself in the realm of his own mind, and his own existance. He observes himself, as if "out-of-body", locked in a space pod. Turning to look elsewhere, he finds himself an older man sitting eating dinner. Becoming that older man, and turning to look elsewhere, he finds himself a very old man laying in a bed. Becoming that old man and looking up from his bed, he finds the Monolith, representative of a God, or "creator-being", seeming to watch over him.
Then, from the Monoliths point of view, or perhaps it could be explained as becoming the Monolith, becoming that God-Creator-Being which Clarke seems to imply is the final destiny of Human evolution, he sees himself as an embryo, but not the embryo of a Human Being, rather, a "Starchild" as the book (and sequel movie, "2010: The Year We Make Contact") calls it.
This Starchild is the evolution of Humanity. *THIS* is what the book (much like "Childhood's End") is about: The evolution of Humanity from merely physically aware ape, to intelligent Human Being, able to take control of the world around him, to God-like Creator-Being, existing in a metaphysical sense, and evolved beyond the physical. Indeed, "Beyond the Infinite", as the chapter is called.
Clarke's startlingly insightful book, indeed his whole philosophy and dream of Humanity's potential, is not at all about technology. It's not at all about Artificial Intelligence, nor about computers becoming sentient. It's about *HUMANS* becoming sentient. It's about Human Beings evolving beyond the physical limitations of merely "in the image of Him" to a being not of body but of energy and an ability beyond our comprehension.
Much like the statement "Created in the image of God" would imply "Created with the abilities and the potential of God", much like the irrefutable knowledge that Humans pass their abilities, their weaknesses, and their potential on genetically from generation to generation, each generation becoming stronger and more knowledgeable by the rules of self-preservation (in a Darwinian and genetic sense), Clarke's stories and philosophies are about evolving further towards that which created Us, to the destiny of becoming that which can Create.
Technology (those of AI, space travel, genetic research, cloning, destruction, and healing) is merely one of the tools we have been given the insight and intelligence to develop along our evolutionary path.
mindslip.
Uh, that's Lewis Black, not Chris. *duck*
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Insightful? Only if you choose to ignore both history and economics. Corporate mergers were practically invented in the 60s, a decade in which corporations, flush with massive amounts of federal spending, decided that adding value by acquisition was less risky and therefore preferable to adding value by innovation. It gave rise to unwieldy behemoths like GM and ITT and added the term "conglomerate" to the economic lexicon. In fact, you can make a case that the 60s laid the foundation for all of the LBOs and divestitures of the 80s as the inefficiencies of size caught up with some of these corporations and they were bought up cheaply then broken up into parts that were individually more valuable than the whole. Not a very pretty legacy.
In contrast, the 90s saw economic growth that surpassed the 60s by pretty much any economic metric you care to name. And this growth was fueled largely by new companies, new markets, and real increases in productivity.
Oh, and no one in the modern era has ever used a 10 or 20 year horizon for all but the vaguest, most trite, planning (i.e. "Mission Statement"). Not only that but, at least in the US (which is what 2001 and, I presume you, are referring to), companies were notorious in the 60s for having extremely short-sighted strategies. For more information, see any of the scores of treatises published in the 70s and 80s on how to rectify this short-sightedness by emulating the Japanese.
with humpy love,
humpmonkey