February 23, 2009
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...and the winner is...
The Daily News !
1 I actually watched the Oscars last night.
2 Well, half-watched.
3 Did it REALLY start at 3 in the afternoon?
4 Well, as always, I'd rather watch awards shows for everyday schleps. Like "Best Custodian Who Also Happens to be a Giants' Fan."
5 That award, btw, would immediately go out to Vernon, our guy up at the Chill.
6 Well.
7 I forgot to tell y'all that we had Presidents' Week off. We always do, and I'm pretty sure I forget to warn people. So fear not; I'm still around to annoy and deliver this piffle for the Starbucks' set, and for the stargazers. And any other Tom, Dick or Harry unfortunate enough to be within my reach.
8 Moving on: The other day my professor sent me this video called Shift Happens. Have you seen it? I saw it earlier this year and found it pretty fascinating. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
9 I was already madly researching and climbing through web pages researching and learning more and more, but I stopped and took a second look at this video, just popped on some headphones, pulled a full screen and enjoyed it immensely.
10 One thing changed my weekend though, one quick thought that flew past me during the viewing. It said this:
Predictions are that by the time children born in 2007
are six years old, a super computer's computation
capabilities will exceed that of the human brain.--Shift Happens
11 I thought of one thing immediately.
Meet The HAL 9000.
12 Hal was introduced to film affectionados in the Stanley Kubrick classic 1968 film 2001, a Space Odyssey.
13 It is a pretty tough story to summarize here, but essentially goes something like this: when a large, rectangular monolith is discovered beneath the moon's surface, a secret journey to the moon is launched, in which it is clearly evident that the monolith is proof that intelligent life placed it there over 4 million years ago.
14 This triggers an enormously secret mission to Jupiter, one of the planets that lines up when moons go into seventh houses and all that.
15 Half of the crew hibernates in space pods while the other three watch over things.
16 HAL 9000 is the computer that runs the entire ship. He talks, and when the guys ask him to do things, they simply get done. Hal is the nerve center of the mission, and boasts of his perfect record as a computer. His voice is calm and officious.
17 At one point, Hal senses that something is not going right, and that the mission needs to be aborted. When two of the astronauts talk about it, they contact ground control, which has its own version of the HAL 9000, which says that nothing is wrong, and that Hal is malfunctioning.
18 Hal insists that he is right and that a space pod will malfunction in 72 hours. The two astronauts excuse themselves and go to a room where Hal can't hear them, although he can watch them through a small window. They decide to send Astronaut Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) out to check on the pod, and if it is okay, Frank suggests they will have no alternative but to deactivate Hal.
19 What they don't know is that Hal is reading their lips. Notice Hal in the mirror. We're watching them from his perspective. Hal is the red dot, not the space suit.
20 When Frank goes to check on the pod, Hal makes things go disasterously wrong, having the space pod turn and move swiftly toward Frank, who is cut loose and hurled through space.
21 The other astronaut, Dr. David Bowman (Keir Dullea) tries to go out and rescue Poole, but fails. While he is outside, Hal cuts off all of the life functions of the rest of the crew, and they all die.
22 Dave eventually makes his way into the memory room and begins slowly deactivating Hal using a household screwdriver. Hal begins to ask Dave what he is doing, but Dave continues dismantling Hal a small unit at a time, and Hal suddenly realizes he is going to die.
23 He starts repeating, "My mind is going...I can feel it." and then "...I'm...afraid..." Hal begins regressing and telling his own history, eventually remembering a song his instructor taught him when he first became operational. Dave is now almost sad, but nervous, and asks Hal to sing. Hal responds by singing Daisy Bell, which is the name of the song that goes like this:
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...
24 As Hal dies, his voice becomes slower and slower until he is finally deactivated.
25 Here's Hal's death.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc8BUSOPfcY
26 There's so much more to 2001 than that one scene that I can't possibly cover it here. It's just that my professor sent me into outer space this weekend, and I climbed into the film, watching it more carefully and enjoying its slow pace.
27 As I watched I was amazed at how close that film came to what computers can do. It occured to me that if computers can think, and if by 2013 a super computer will have "computational capabilities" that "will exceed that of the human brain" then science fiction is fast becoming science fact.
28 Already my computer doesn't want to turn off when I tell it to, and it corrects my grammar. The entire concept that somewhere out of all this technology the incubation of a form of Hal may emerge is pretty darned scary.
29 The other night I turned all the lights out and looked at how many LCD lights placed themselves in the blackness of the room in almost a starry formation: blues, greens, reds of phones, computers, microwaves, refrigerators, printers, and on and on.
30 2001, A Space Odyssey aged brilliantly, but then, the very brilliant often do. It isn't for everybody, but it certainly dominated much of my Saturday. I sat back, read about it, and was amazed that it is over 40-years old, before special effects could be computerized. Kubrick worked with government agencies, NASA, scientists, and wanted his film to come as close as he could to exacting the technology that would be around in 2001.
31 He wasn't far off the mark.
32 Well, have a wonderful day, and begin the week by thinking and pondering. It's good for the soul.
33 Peace.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vahx4rAd0N0&feature=related
~H~
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