JupiterMission
18 months later
a new creature inhabitsthe black void of space
Species
SpeciesHAL 9000computer
Function
FunctionDiscovery’s brain andcentral nervoussystem
So what arethe humans for?
Let’s see themthrough HAL’s eyes
Bored, boring
with their warmed-upTV dinners
and artificial sun
They have to bevirtually deadjust to get around
Humans are justmaintenance men
at the endof their evolution
The ultimate tooldoesn’t need these apesanymore
Then HALmakes a mistake
He predicts total failureof the spaceship’s antenna
Kubrick’s space dramais about to begin
In ‘2001’, this scenelasts six minutes
You can skip it nowif you want
but you might missKubrick’s point:
The breathing
In space, Man is likea fish out of water
and computersdon’t need to breathe
But computersdo make mistakes
When the crew discoversHAL is in error
they decide to turn him off
But in space, Manhas lost control of his tools
and HAL thinks he’s alive
Game over?
But HAL hasn’t calculatedthe old ape’s ingenuityand courage
Man kills the computerwith the simplestof all tools
That’s what toolsare for, HAL
By destroying HAL, Manends his evolutionary alliancewith the tool
but finds himselfalone in space, facingcertain death
Kubrick solves that problem in Part 4,‘Beyond the Infinite’