Valeriorivoli

...the end of this universe does not show us new planets, aliens, or parallel dimensions: it only shows us ourselves, closing a circle. And then starting again.
I disagree: it is logical that in the otherworldly journey Bowman dies, really dies, just as the first monkey died, just as the hibernated ones die, reflecting the aseptic scientists of the lunar base, just as the pre-cooked meals died, the emotionless phone call to Dr. Floyd’s little girl, the hibernated ones are semi-dead then killed by Hal, Hal also dies who did not want to die and to escape from a too human logic; technology grants death with the illusion of prolonging life... Technology should be a means for the cosmic superman, this is what Kubrick means, this is the choice of Zarathustra's notes, and in the end, Bowman also dies in body and mind to be reborn as something different, a vigilant, conscious fetus, that sooner or later will return to Earth with the new man memorized in the circuits of the new mind... I guess that’s how it is. And who says that the monolith-message from the aliens, that is, the neural microchip that man has extra, was not given by men from the future, from the cosmic depths that reflect like in us as their own younger selves, cosmically...?

wonderful blackdog, and how could I not be there? I too have touched Hal, I was moved! It's not that I like everything about Kubrick, but this Lolita and Barry Lyndon are great films. 2001 is my favorite though. I hate Spartacus which is anti-magic, and A Clockwork Orange doesn't drive me crazy but the Ludovico Technique, mhhh.

For once, I agree; I would even say the price of life, because it’s expensive these days.

Can you hear me Major Tom, Can you hear me metallar bion?

dear bjorky the technological hiatus is the rift, the topical moment from which there is no turning back. The bone is the first weapon. The advancement of life comes at the cost of death. amen

WE LOVE YOU. AND THIS TIME, narcissistically, stochastically, and onanistically, I VOTE FOR MYSELF!

round and round the world goes down, the silver stars cost 500...

In the film, the forecasts for the future include: the ultra-flat digital screen, the portable TVs used by astronauts, the videophone paid with a multi-use credit card—we're in '68, and the credit card was still a privilege of very few—the common use of the microwave oven—already invented, but not yet widespread—used to heat the astronauts' precooked food, a kind of multicolored puree that hints at the concept of fast food; voice recognition by a machine, a supercomputer capable not only of sensory activities, such as sight, hearing, and voice, but even of intellectual activities at the highest degree.
The sophisticated computer in the film, Hal 9000, defying the three laws of robotics, goes haywire and becomes a murderer and mutineer; perhaps due to a programming error by its creators, or due to the excessus mentis of an unrelenting logic that excludes falsehood, namely that the crew was not supposed to know the truth about the monolith. Yet, beneath its enormous "neo-cortex," Hal hides childhood memories and very human feelings: as the astronaut excludes the circuits governing its more advanced and sophisticated functions, fear emerges along with a nursery rhyme that gradually fades into indistinction, returning to a pre-verbal dimension. Hal's regression is both a return to individual childhood and to the dawn of humanity, because both our personal ontogenetic history and the phylogenetic history of the species are imprinted in our brain and nervous system.
Sometimes one gets the distinct feeling that this technological program was broadly already written. It seems that the great Time Machine of that immense clock of life on Earth only creates all the conditions at a certain point—not before—so that some geniuses can overcome social, mental, etc., constraints and break the centuries-old beliefs of a nation or of humanity as a whole.
But then is there a predetermined cosmic program, and man is its executor? If this kinetic-mercurial acceleration of support technologies were preparatory to something grander: the transfer of all earthly knowledge to electronic brains capable of immense databases of music, arts, culture, genetic codes. All encapsulated in a few silver discs, like cosmic memories ready to be boarded on space Arks that one day will carry our descendants to planets akin to our own.
The human brain is composed of approximately 10^12 neurons, and each neuron makes on average 10^3 connections (synapses) with other neurons, totaling 10^15 synapses. In an artificial neural network, a synapse can effectively be simulated with a real number (floating point) representable in 4 bytes of memory. Consequently, the amount of memory required to simulate 10^15 synapses is 4*10^15 bytes (4 million gigabytes). Let's say that to simulate the entire human brain requires 8 million gigabytes, including the memory needed to store the output values of the neurons and other internal brain states.
Over the last 20 years, the capacity of RAM in computers has grown exponentially, roughly tenfold every 4 years. The chart shown in Figure 1 illustrates the typical memory configurations installed in personal computers since 1980.
For example, from the equation, it can be deduced that in 1990, a personal computer typically had 1 Mbyte of RAM. By 1998, a typical configuration included about 100 Mbytes of RAM, and so on.
By reversing the relationship, it is possible to predict the year when a certain amount of memory will be available (as long as the growth follows the same pattern recorded in recent years):
year = 1966 + 4 log10 (bytes).
Now, to find out the year when a computer will have 8 million gigabytes of RAM (8*10^15 bytes), we simply need to substitute that number into the previous equation and calculate the result. The answer obtained is the year 2029.

Here... I mean, no, what I wanted to say is... I couldn't go into too much detail, there wasn't space: I don't claim to have understood the film, which I have watched countless times, as the die-hard sci-fi fan I am: here are the other pieces: some see it as a fascinating allegory of evolution, others see a religious parable, there isn't an objective interpretation; to want to strip it of its most captivating aspect means depriving it of its essence, which is its potentiality, that's the secret of the film. The monolith is merely a symbol of a higher mind, just as, for example, the flames of the Holy Spirit.
- The medium is the message, it's true, but I believe there’s also an unprogrammed aspect, a subconscious vision that is partly tributary to the psychedelic culture of the era.
- Our sun is like a 40-year-old man, it’s a third-generation yellow dwarf, meaning it has formed from the cosmic remnants of at least other types of lighter stars, and that’s why its furnace has managed to calcine heavy metals that we eat, assimilate, and use, up to the super heavy elements of nuclear energy. There exist older stellar systems than ours that produce incredibly heavy and stable elements so powerful that, when properly processed, they create antimatter to travel beyond light and to make quantum leaps to reach distant planetary systems. Our solar system and planet Earth, along with its inhabitants, are entering a phase of maturity, and this is thanks to technology.
- The film, like much sci-fi, is an unconscious preparation that humanity is making for the next and final leap of a technological civilization, namely contact with technologically superior civilizations.
- The price to pay for all this will be steep, but inevitable.
If the stars and other bodies in the universe end up reproducing more or less exact copies of themselves, then humanity, as a microcosm, cannot be excluded from the process.

They were not bad at all, I remember they went out at the same time as the Motley, Invasion of Your Privacy if I’m not mistaken.