I argue that Objectivists/libertarians should be the leading voices for a Human Achievement Alliance! Here's another piece on life extension: "Google, Entrepreneurs, and Living 500 Years." http://atlassociety.org/commentary/co...

Exactly, I waste a huge amount of time trying just to get my laptop resurrected from forgetting how to do win7 updates. I think MS has trashed it to get you to shift up....what a pain..

Exactly, I waste a huge amount of time trying just to get my laptop resurrected from forgetting how to do win7 updates. I think MS has trashed it to get you to shift up....what a pain..

I for one want to become a Transhuman! The benefits out-weigh anything negative. The best read on man-machine interface is Ben Bova's Moon War series.

It is certainly the liberals who are currently promoting the idea that new tech (esp. anti-aging) will only be available to the elite. The greatest barrier to new tech is regulation, not elitism.

Jan

I have some friends and acquaintances who are involved in Maker stuff. One of the, a dropout from a Chem PhD program, has started several Maker facilities.

If I had lots of extra time on my hands...

Jan

Brilliant and daring. The technique, called "lap dissolve" had been around for 50 years, but Kubrick chose the more primitive, and in this case more powerful sudden change from one frame to the next. The trouble with genius is that it often takes non-genius a few years to catch up. Examples: Einstein, Stravinsky.

Well, the monoliths were just an alien technology that was to foster and protect the growth of intelligent life. Often termed "religious" I guess. Leads right back into a book called "We have never been Alone" which advances an interesting thesis that all religions today are just based on a manipulation by ancient aliens who created them to control people through their "priests". Then when they hauled out of here, those priests were out of a job, so they just kept it all going...sounds like government to me...

I thought it was a "religious" issue of whether humankind was worthy-- but without the mysticism, substitutionary atonement, etc.

"the usual liberals raised the fear of a huge class divide because only the elite would be able to afford computers and the internet. Of course, even the poorest communities usually had libraries with free use of computers.:
You're saying the 90s these liberals raise the fear of a digital class divide. What nonsense you say, because of course someone had already set up public institutions that provided books and computer access at no cost to the poor. That was liberals.

It was an interesting play on the idea of time as a reference for everything, even today people who had an Apple2C (I did) are thought of as the same as those who had Model T's. Technological barbarians. I think AC skewered the monolith idea in the last book though, unless he was implying it had the same issue as HAL (secret programming in conflict).

I believe he is correct, add to that it was grey due to the moondust, symbolic of man being the end product of the monoliths adjustments, yet was still the same, I think.

Jan, tech can become the great equalizer, in that it removes the controls they have over us. Intel's CEO is a big pusher of the maker idea.

AJ, find the movie or see if YT has the first 20 minutes, some of the best special effects done. On a CinemaScope screen it was fantastic. Their Shuttle idea was nearly spot on, except it could take off from a runway and get to orbit on it's own.

That movie was also a classic in its time. I think it may have been an adaptation of The Man Who Sold the Moon that introduced Mr. Harriam.

Thanks, all, for reminding me of 2001. I saw it, walked out not understanding very much about the entire arc, then read the novel and saw the movie several more times.

Walking out of the second viewing, people were expressing all kinds of conclusions as to "what this or that part meant..." and I could hardly restrain myself from shouting, "Read The Book!"

At least in the novel, Clarke made it pretty clear what was going on and what 'things meant,' although the final scene of the movie left out one key concept... the Star Child exploded/destroyed all of the nuclear weapons orbiting the Earth so that they could no longer be a danger to the people living on the planet. I'm sure it would have been 'damn-near impossible to 'explain' that in the movie, but the intent in the book was crystal-clear.

I may have to excavate that old DVD again, too.
Thanks!

Oh, and in the making of 2001, the switch from leg bone to space ship occurred in the span of ONE frame of the movie to the next. No fade, no dissolve; brilliant.

2001 was a great book. I never watched the movie. The first few chapters of the book were absolutely riveting.

In the movie "Destination Moon" (1950) was a Heinlein story that had private businessmen building the first rocket to go to the Moon, in part also to prepare for national defense. There's a scene where government regulators are racing to the rocket to stops its launch and the astronauts are racing to get it launched before government can stop them!

In the '90s the usual liberals raised the fear of a huge class divide because only the elite would be able to afford computers and the internet. Of course, even the poorest communities usually had libraries with free use of computers. (They also had books!) But we are in an age of EXPONENTIAL technological development and spreading of technologies. It took 60 yrs for telephones to go from 10% market penetration to 50%. It took 11 yrs for PC and 6 years for the internet to grow that way. New technologies rapid increases in quality and drops in prices. And folks, wait til you see what's going to happen with genetic engineering, bionics and nanotech in the next 5-10 yrs. Transhuman might be here quicker than you can imagine!

FYI, I heard Keir Dullea discuss the film a few weeks ago when I saw it again and he mentioned both the ape-men touching the monolith and Floyd on the Moon touching it. He said Floyd's glove was the same gray color as the ape-man's hand. (I'll have to check my bluray for that.)

I liked the last 2 books. In 2061 people had been scared by the warning of "attempt no landing there", but they start pushing the limits, going closer and closer. A ship crashes there. I found I suspend disbelief and imagine a really powerful force made that planet, the creepy place shown at the end of 2010 with the monolith silently and mysteriously looking over it. It made for a creepy and exciting setting for me.

3001 was okay, but its descrption of life 1000 years from when I read it 15 years ago seems closer to life today. They have Siri, but they call it Miss Pringle. I didn't get into the climax. In the end the monolith does not destroy the solar system, and I never really got into that plot element. The most interesting thing was how people in 3001 considered someone from 2000 to have lived roughly in the time of Ben Franklin. It's like how I think of the Roman Empire as splitting into East and West, and the West collapsing around the same time.

It was a wonderful movie; I need to see it again. The scene where the bone transforms into the space vehicle one of the best ever filmed.

One of the ways in which the movie is apparently correct is that we have since learned that the size of hominin brain increased in approximate conjunction with their dentition changing to carnivore. It is meat that fuels our brains.

Insofar as the new tech only being available to the elite. Ha! They may wish it were so, but that rabbit jumped out of the bag long since. Between 3D printing and Makerfairs, biotech is becoming more distributed (and hence less controllable) every year, just as power is. We need Time.

Jan

I saw it when it first came out in the three camera process with my two pre-teen sons. They didn't get it, but they loved it for it's (then) revolutionary presentation. Truth be told, I didn't get it either, after many viewings, I had to say that Kubrick was more of a genius than I gave him credit for. His advanced conceptualization was not only pioneering, but courageous.

AJA subscribes to the same misgivings. Something's rotten in Denmark and it ain't the fish. So far, the MSM has noticed the disparity in demographic but no one has made the next logical extrapolation, given this idiot's proclivity for always soft-pedaling their mayhem. It goes back to his early years in Indonesia where he was immersed in, if not converted to, Islam. Somebody in a position of influence better catch on fast.

Take note that Clarke and Kubrick designed the book and film to be companions, two parts of a single whole meant to be read and viewed together.