"The ending of 2001 is notoriously difficult to understand. What is your interpretation of the ending of the film?"
(Keir Dullea) The thing about Kubrick's films is that he never ever explained any of it. That's why when the film came out a lot of people were very confused. And that's a very common question: what did the ending mean? To tell you the truth, I don't think there is an absolutely specific interpretation. My own interpretation - the monolith is a kind of metaphor for change.
"How realistic would you suppose Space Odyssey could become in the future? With technological advances, what do you suppose of modern day computers and the communication between man and computer?"
(Gary Lockwood) Talking about the current relationship of man and computer, and where things are…all they've really done, the programming has become so advanced.
(Above: a Space Shuttle computer)
For example now what's happening is they've trained computers to teach other computers. And so the theory is you get all this power activity, so much concentration of medical facts and situations around they all get compiled and put in computers. And then there's some people worried that computers will take over, turn on us or attack us or whatever. I think they're relatively pretty reasonable concepts. In 2001, if you really think about it, look at what Hal did.
Source: Flickr
He's looking at us – we're talking to him at various times – and then he sees us in the park, and we talk about disconnecting him, and so he goes out and protects his position. Which anybody does.
We all watch the channels that support and reinforce our political theories, we're not Trump-ers but there's a whole lot of people in America who watch FOX channel and they put the guy in office. So now we've got to deal with him or you'll have to as well. So my point is we don't really know where it's all gonna go. It's a life adventure. And a lot of people are aware of the possibility of computer attack or fear.
I say write Haiku until you got to deal with it.
Oh wow.