2001 A Space Odyssey...

[LeftHander]

Where are the moon bases, the commercial space shuttle and moon transportation? Where are the large flat panel video phones? Where is the international space station with hotels and restaurants? Where are the personal flat panel tablet television displays the size of a piece of paper? Where are the computers that think like humans? What do we have instead? SUV's, flat panel televisions of crap, mega malls, mega churches, telephones in our pocket that work poorly, invasion and occupation, poor employment, low national esteem and no international respect.

Our dreams were killed. They were killed just like the progressives were in the 60's by the conservative movement. A movement that culminated and ended in the rise of George W. Bush. The will of the American government was forced into the propagation and proliferation of the military industrial complex and the exploitation of oil and the american consumer.

We could of had many advances made in the human condition as Clarke and Kubrick envisioned at the time. But that vision was changed, the money and effort went into war, oil and individual profit.

We left behind a dream, somewhere in the jungles of SE Asia, the oil fields, shopping malls and the deserts of the middle east. Now we have this bitter divided county trying to heal itself and find direction.



"My mind is going...I can feel it."

[brettdale]

1. kick

kick

[EstimatedProphet]

2. Amen

Add to your list the electric car, WHICH WAS DEVELOPED IN THE 70S FOR GOD'S SAKE! Why don't we have anything better than internal combustion yet?!?

[Cleita]

3. In that movie all the aforementioned was done by corporations.

The PanAm space flight. The Hilton Hotel on the space station. That's what I remember. It turns out that the corporate model wasn't very good for the future after all.

[Buck Turgidson]

4. Don't forget Howard Johnson's

[Forrest Greene]

5. Corporations & The Military

...IIRC. Wherezat big black box?

[begin_within]

6. Great post. And great movie. On that same note, where are the vast SOLAR FARMS

throughout the sunny southwestern U.S., that could be producing free, non-polluting electricity right now?

[hsher]

7. Not killed... sleeping (K&R)

Take an enormous risk that scares you and wake them up -
No change comes until we do it -
Who are we waiting for to do it first?
Be the ape who touches the monolith.

:kick:

[Glorfindel]

8. I remember watching that movie in 1968 in Washington, DC

I had just returned from Vietnam the previous December, and "2001" lifted my spirits and filled me with euphoria. "Yes, of course this is how it will be," we all agreed. And then Dr. King and RFK were murdered, the Chicago riots marred the Democratic Convention, and Richard Nixon was elected president by a nation gone mad with fear. Small-minded, timid, and slaveringly greedy men hijacked this country, and nothing has been the same since.

[LeftHander]

9. I watched the other night on DVD...

I bought the DVD a couple years ago. For some reason I wanted to see it again after watching "An Inconvenient Truth"....

[JHB]

10. As much as I agree with that...

...Don't forget some people on "our" side considered it all a big "moondoggle" and what we would today term "corporate welfare" for some of the same companies that were part of our military-industrial complex.

[mockmonkey]

11. The Intelligent Aliens

took their obelisk and went home.

[CrispyQ]

18. ...

:rofl:

But seriously, I don't blame them. ;)

[Richard Steele]

12. "Use technology to help PEOPLE, not corporations? I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."

You have to remember that Corporations exist to make PROFITS,
not IMPROVEMENTS.

All the things mentioned in your OP are perfectly feasable; we
know how to build them. Most exist already, and are sitting on
a shelf somewhere.

But the CORPORATION who built them hasn't finished squeezing
the last few nickels out of the things it invented 15 years ago,
so they are gonna stay on that shelf awhile.

The best, BRIEFEST summation of this was a NewYorker cartoon I saw once,
from the 1950s:
A visitor to Thomas Edison's workshop is staring at a "modern high-tech"
reel-to-reel player siting on a crowded shelf.
Tom is pointing to a vintage 'conch shell' phonograph on a table,
and saying, "Yeah, that works great. But THIS is what we're selling this year."

[leeroysphitz]

13. I've thought about this also...

Were these unrealistic expectations or did we just fail to live up to them?

[kid a]

14. OIL Tycoons and Lobby - STOLE THAT DREAM

[porphyrian]

15. The dream isn't dead as long as the living are having it.

Let's shove it down their fucking throats for a while.

[The2ndWheel]

16. Why?

"Where are the moon bases, the commercial space shuttle and moon transportation? Where are the large flat panel video phones? Where is the international space station with hotels and restaurants? Where are the personal flat panel tablet television displays the size of a piece of paper? Where are the computers that think like humans?"

Life on Earth not doing it for you? Too boring?

Why do we need moon bases and space restaurants?

Why do you want computers to think like humans? Don't humans think like humans? Wouldn't humans be obsolete then? Why would we need to be here?

[LeftHander]

17. Well the point is....

"Why do we need moon bases and space restaurants?"

Why do we need invasions, nukes, 13 carrier battle groups?

The point is it is not that we need them but that sometime ago there was optimism and excitement for the future because we entered the "space age". 2001 was a window into the future that could of been. Had we not spend countless billions on war and shiny worthless junk maybe we would be dining at the "Restaurant at the end of the Universe".

[cascadiance]

19. Both 2001 and Star Trek saw a world that transcended materialism...

I think they envisioned a world that life itself was wonder, and that new life experience could still be fantastic without a lot of resource consuming material goods.

Our current corporate economy depends on us having that thirst for material goods that ultimately will be our downfall in destroying our planet's ecosphere.

[thingfisher]

20. Our current corporate economy

depends on us having that thirst for material goods that ultimately will be our downfall in destroying our planet's ecosphere.

How can a culture sustain the idea of continual growth? Yet, the corporate model depends on growth to increase profits coupled with technology to replace human labor. At some point might it not become wiser to limit growth and technology, that isn't really needed (except to reduce production costs), in the interest of providing jobs and stability for society?

What good does it do to put people out of work who then become unable to purchase the goods and services they used to help provide?
I guess it is human nature to amass riches when given the chance, but history shows us that human greed will eventually destroy the most long lived and powerful societies over the long haul.

[Johonny]

22. well

it turns out to be absolutely no reason to live in space, on the moon and the space shuttle is really, really expensive and puts you in near Earth Orbit where there is very little to do.

It's a lot harder to make computer that think like human than Clark apparently thought. It's particularly hard considering we are only beginning to understand how humans think.

I refuse to believe we are no visionary cause I don't drive my moonjeep to the moonstation eating a moon pie...

[LeftHander]

25. did you call me a moonbat...?

lol

[johnaries]

29. HAL

Heuristically-programmed ALgorithmic computer actually do exist today. HAL didn't actually think like a human. The problem with HAL was that he had conflicting programming. Before the mission, he had a program added secretly to investigate the destination of the signal from the monolith. It became the primary mission and overrode any other aspect of the mission. He was not allowed to reveal this mission to the astronauts.

As good as the movie was, the book was many times better. I've re-read it many times.

[lumberjack_jeff]

26. No shit. Can't even make a decent Sci Fi movie. n/t

[Parche]

21. 2001

Hal, is that you?

[Guaranteed]

23. Great post. We could be so much more than this. nt

[n2doc]

24. I have a large flat panel video phone

It's called an iMac...

[johnaries]

27. You're forgetting the ending.

Although it didn't show it in the movie, in the book when the Star Chid returned to Earth he was distressed at seeing all of the industries belching pollution into the air. So, he used his new mental energies to destroy them all instantly in a series of nuclear explosions around the planet.

[Blue_Tires]

28. open the pod bay doors, hal....

[Odin2005]

30. People started caring more about instant gratification over long term payoff.

We SHOLD of on Mars right now. The only reason we are not is that our society is stuck in a myopic rut of instant gratification that discrourages long-term investment.

[BrewerJohn]

31. The world of '2001' had all that material stuff, but

nowhere was it implied that the world had, for example, conquered poverty. And remember the distrust
and intrigue between the Russians and the Americans that was portrayed. The Cold War was supposed to
be still going on, not to mention any hot wars.

That world had made amazing technological progress, but had misplaced its soul. The human race was
badly in need of transcendence, which was what the film was really all about.

I think this is what you are really getting at, but I just wanted to put one of my favorite movies
into proper perspective.

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. And where's my soma? And the feelies? We've been waiting 70 years for them

It's unfair. Science fiction told us what we could look forward to, and it hasn't happened. That's it - I'm not moving from here until I can feel each hair of that bearskin rug reproduced, and I have my daily ration of the perfect drug. Waaaah.