You want a red button that makes your spacecraft have a seizure and shoot lasers in every random direction?

It's a chilling thought, though; 2001 is many things - long, ponderous, ultimately sterile and a product of pretension and the late '60s zeitgeist to name just a few - but I've never thought of it as a model of the kind of world that I'd want to live in. Can't The Last Starfighter come true, instead?

I hope someone throws you out of the airlock.

"[L]ong, ponderous, ultimately sterile and a product of pretension"--how many aspects of present-day life does that describe? Maybe 2001 was prescient in more than just its technology.

@Log1c: Every Monday.

I hope the final comment in the article above was a joke.

To me, 2001 is a mythology/ritual magical working focused on human evolution. I think it represents the birth of rational thought, the ascendence of rationality, and the eventual integration of rationality with intuition and creativity as we make the next leap to non-local consciousness. And, yes, i think that is the reality experienced today by some cells within this vast organism we call humanity.
and of course, about how humanity's evolution was/is influenced by "outside" forces.

@Naked_Quark: There are plenty of people who look down on 2001 simply because they can't stand Kubrick. I frankly think it's an excellent film that kind of tails off at the end. The story is certainly mind-expanding. And for just 40 years later, the number of things that are available (LEO stations, Flat panel monitors, exercise in space, Video communications, personal entertainment, etc.) is a pretty good measure of Arthur C. Clarke's vision. And yes, the future Kubrick painted was fairly sterile, but I think that's because he did not take into account that foreign relations and world politics were not going to be sorted out as easily as technology.

Is this another 2010 is better than 2001 article? Cause you're still wrong.

It's all about evolution and is therefore a theory that we can continue to work on. There were no pc's in 2001. Missed that one.

@B: I still haven't seen that... I still thank my dad for introducing me to Kubrick when I was in high school.

How could a writer on a Sci Fi weblog talk badly about the one movie that actually got everything spot on?!

Does running a marathon in microgravity really count..?

I saw 2001 in the theater as a young boy, and I was extremely impressed with the vision of the future, the scenes that involved the guy going t othe space station and ultimately the moon base.

The rest of the film -- the prehistoric part and the Discovery scenes -- not so much. And I think the ending sequences were a little too 1968/LSD inspired.

But even to this day, the space station scenes set the bar for what the future was supposed to be like, and have inspired many other films and tv shows that involve commercial space travel.

@Jeff-Minor: Yes, and basically any kind of comuter that was not a terminal on a large main-frame.

The concept of portable computing, tablets, etc. was also absent. Even though shuttles are going to a space station, I still can't get a PanAm ticket on one. There are no bases on the moon, not to mention deep-space exploration, cryonic hibernation, etc etc.

So 2001 postulated all that, but missed laptops, and other personal computing devices. In 2008 more of that film in still fantasy, and more of my everyday life is more amazing than the film. Odd.

I think the original source is actually NASA.gov on this: [www.nasa.gov]

I don't think that our current state of space exploration holds a candle to that of 2001, even in terms of sheer tonnage boosted into orbit.
The international Space Station is at best a temporary installation. While human beings have been able to stay there for short periods (in terms of the commitment needed for interplanetary travel) they do so in a micro-gravity environment, which causes the human structure to atrophy and eventually fail.
2001's "ring station" had artificial gravity, and was large enough to support human life indefinitely, while also supporting missions to the lunar colony (something we don't have) and beyond.
I believe that our species has dropped the ball on space exploration, and we will pay a great price for it...

@NefariousNewt: Oh yeah, it was mind expanding all right, along with the smoking of a somewhat illegal substance while viewing it. It was definitely mind expanding.

Good film. However we are no closer to living and working in space Than we were then. The ISS is nice but it is in Earth's orbit. Jupiter, or the moon for that matter, is a long way away. More so now that in 1968. Ask Mr. Obama about that.

'Space is the final frontier, but it's made in a Hollywood basement'
Californiacation, Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Obama about space
[www.americanthinker.com]

Ok, this is a good time for me to ask a physics question that I would love answered. So in 2001 they Jog around the station due to centrifugal force, the force keeps you on the floor... but... if you jump high do you break the power of the force over you and enter back into the zero G or do you still fall back to the ground.

I say you would float, my friends say you would fall back down.

Anyone?

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: Depends on the diameter of the rotating ring. IIRC, the calculations for size of the ring X speed of rotation are pretty clear on how to generate 1G. Trouble is, you need a BIG diameter to avoid just that sort of gravity shift you're talking about. Heck with jumping up-- Dave Bowman would have felt noticeably different gravitational effects just from his feet to his hands and to his head. And the speed of rotation necessary to generate 1G of gravity at his feet would have been fast enough to cause him motion sickness in his head.

Wikipedia does this all pretty good justice: [en.wikipedia.org]

@StevieQ: " And I think the ending sequences were a little too 1968/LSD inspired."

this seems to be the standard interpretation of the 'star gate' sequence...however that's really putting the cart before the horse...the visuals were not inspired by LSD etc...it was, IMO, an attempt to visualize something outside human experience.
2001 is, truly, one of the greatest films ever made, it's long like Hamlet is long, ponderous like the weight of human history, and it's sterility comes from it's unrelenting rationality.

Gold Star, Mr. Kubrick.

@StevieQ: "Yes, and basically any kind of comuter that was not a terminal on a large main-frame." What's this 'bout deathly ill communters traveling on large trains? Were you smoking crack when saw this movie?

:)

You have to remember two things about 2001. It was made shortly after Kennedy had started the space race and the democrats were still in office. The next two decades were a republican administration and that all but killed NASA.
Second, everyone knows that Clark was a time traveler from the future and how could Kubrick have gotten it wrong with Clark by his side?

The end of 2001 makes more sense if you read the book. And perhaps some will disagree with me but I think this was the hardest of hard science fiction movies ever made. Think about it. Realistically, how you depict first contact with an alien civilization that isn't a cop out like Close Encounters' spindly humanoids?

Anyway I don't think it was an attempt to play to the drug subculture at that time--although I know a lot of hips and beats went to see it high as kites--my parents took me when I was nearly 5 years old--I'm pretty sure they were stoked on some sort of controlled substance.

For me, as a 4 year old kid, it scared the living daylights out of me. As the years passed, my appreciation for it grew and grew. It's the best science fiction movie ever made--bar none (Although there are some other close rivals.)

I'm going to be get terribly elitist on your sorry asses and say if you think it's slow and sterile, your thought processes simply aren't deep enough. Go watch some seizure inducing video games and leave us grown ups alone.

Man, that US Moon base was huge, huge!

And the Soviets had their own Moon base too!

@ndgmtlcd: What are Soviets? I already have kids asking me that question. Gawd, don't they teach history in school?

@corpore-metal:

"I'm going to be get terribly elitist on your sorry asses and say if you think it's slow and sterile, your thought processes simply aren't deep enough."

agreed. it's actually quite exciting and mindblowing as long as you're tapped into the symbolism and the ideas behind it.

BTW, there's nothing wrong with people not liking one or another "important" movies. There's all kinds of books and movies that everyone tells me i "need" to watch that bore me to tears.