Movie Gadget Friday: 2010: The Year We Make Contact
By Ariel Waldman 
posted Mar 28th 2008 10:36PM
posted Mar 28th 2008 10:36PM
Ariel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.
Last week on Movie Gadget Friday we kicked off our two-part series in honor of the late Arthur C. Clarke with 2001: A Space Odyssey. This week continues our tribute as we look into some of the support systems on board Discovery 1 and the Leonov in 2010: The Year We Make Contact. While we hear Dave Bowman proclaim "My God, it's full of stars", we can't help but dig through this film full of gadgets.
HAL 9000 and SAL 9000
Designed as an artificial emotional intelligence machine, the HAL 9000 and SAL 9000 require human interaction for enhanced performance. Represented by a blue camera eye and female voice, SAL 9000 served as a guide to monitoring potential reactions by the previously disabled HAL 9000. Both machines incorporate keyboard and audio input to communicate with intelligent carbon-based lifeforms (read: us). The HAL 9000 is adept at facial, vocal, and vital sign recognition and makes decisions based on a strict understanding of logic. HAL maintains numerous responsibilities while acting as the brain and central nervous system of Discovery 1. Though HAL appears to be programmed to protect the crew, there are obvious and inherent flaws in his logic programming, resulting in -- spoiler alert -- in committing homicide to resolve conflicting commands. More after the jump.
Hibernation system
Similar to the pods seen on the vacant Discovery ship, the hibernation system on board the Alexei Leonov serves as a way to minimalize vital needs to the bare necessities. In fact, people in hibernation breathe on average of once per minute and are said to not experience any amount of REM. The system attaches a series of electrodes across various places of a person's body to monitor EEG waves among other bodily functions. The cryogenic hibernation technology is fully operational and applicable to long-term missions that require the use for saving valuable resources along the way. The pods and people are hooked into a series of life support systems that are then able to be controlled by autonomous on board computers if need be.
Non-conducting blade and controller
Due to the potential for unstable, logic-based decisions resulting in the imminent situation of a machine like HAL 9000 murdering crew members, a non-conducting blade device was devised as a back-up plan to disconnect HAL before the crew found themselves, um, disabled. The device is hooked up to a remote controlled trigger disguised as a red calculator. Detonation is triggered by punching in nine nines, selecting the square root, and then the integer. Installed inside a critical location of HAL's wires, the non-conducting blade is sure to not create any short circuits when triggered.
Ariel Waldman is a social media insights consultant based in San Francisco. Her blog can be found at http://arielwaldman.com.
Last week on Movie Gadget Friday we kicked off our two-part series in honor of the late Arthur C. Clarke with 2001: A Space Odyssey. This week continues our tribute as we look into some of the support systems on board Discovery 1 and the Leonov in 2010: The Year We Make Contact. While we hear Dave Bowman proclaim "My God, it's full of stars", we can't help but dig through this film full of gadgets.
Designed as an artificial emotional intelligence machine, the HAL 9000 and SAL 9000 require human interaction for enhanced performance. Represented by a blue camera eye and female voice, SAL 9000 served as a guide to monitoring potential reactions by the previously disabled HAL 9000. Both machines incorporate keyboard and audio input to communicate with intelligent carbon-based lifeforms (read: us). The HAL 9000 is adept at facial, vocal, and vital sign recognition and makes decisions based on a strict understanding of logic. HAL maintains numerous responsibilities while acting as the brain and central nervous system of Discovery 1. Though HAL appears to be programmed to protect the crew, there are obvious and inherent flaws in his logic programming, resulting in -- spoiler alert -- in committing homicide to resolve conflicting commands. More after the jump.
Similar to the pods seen on the vacant Discovery ship, the hibernation system on board the Alexei Leonov serves as a way to minimalize vital needs to the bare necessities. In fact, people in hibernation breathe on average of once per minute and are said to not experience any amount of REM. The system attaches a series of electrodes across various places of a person's body to monitor EEG waves among other bodily functions. The cryogenic hibernation technology is fully operational and applicable to long-term missions that require the use for saving valuable resources along the way. The pods and people are hooked into a series of life support systems that are then able to be controlled by autonomous on board computers if need be.
Due to the potential for unstable, logic-based decisions resulting in the imminent situation of a machine like HAL 9000 murdering crew members, a non-conducting blade device was devised as a back-up plan to disconnect HAL before the crew found themselves, um, disabled. The device is hooked up to a remote controlled trigger disguised as a red calculator. Detonation is triggered by punching in nine nines, selecting the square root, and then the integer. Installed inside a critical location of HAL's wires, the non-conducting blade is sure to not create any short circuits when triggered.
Ariel Waldman is a social media insights consultant based in San Francisco. Her blog can be found at http://arielwaldman.com.
I Love engadget !!
hi
hullo thar
"Will I dream?"
Please choose from one of the following:
"I for one welcome..."
"but will it play doom/crysis"
Give HAL arms, hands, and a gun and find out.
you forget to ask if it will blend. but the answer wouldve been that it will blend you
I, for one, welcome our Doom- and Crysis-playing overlords.
Of course they can play Crysis!
They even make crysis....
I mean crisis
Fogive my bad spelling..............
IMHO, the books were much better than any of the movie.
Of course I wasn't around back then when they were first released, so the Magic may be lost on me.
I agree, partially because the special effects in my mind's eye, while reading the books, are flawless and totally believable.
This must be where John Lithgow made contact with the big giant head.
I love this movie. I don't know why it gets treated like a red headed stepchild. It's completely different than 2001, and stands on it's own. The only upside to Arthur C. Clarke passing is that maybe now it will get the same Blu-Ray treatment that 2001 got. (The one and only DVD version of 2010 is non-anamorphic.)
I really like it too and will buy it if it comes out on Blu-ray.
Is anyone else kinda lost?
Does anyone remember what "HAL" stands for? :)
Yes, looking at the letters HAL.
What letters in the alphabet come after each letter of HAL?
Arthur C. himself said so during an interview I saw years ago.
yes, i do.
yep.
no you dont
Heuristically-Programmed ALgorithmic computer 9000
HAL
H+1 = I
A+1 = B
L+1 = M
IBM
topper, everything I have ever read tells me he denied it vociferously - if you could find something to the contrary, I would love to see it.
What about the Leonov's air braking system? Or its mission pods? How about the Leonov itself with its rotating crew compartment? The Very Large Array? Or Dr. Floyd's "futuristic" computer with a round CRT display and wire frame 3-D drawings? There's lots of tech still to explore here.
You tell 'em, EBone.
2010 sucked, and basically took all the life out of 2001 by solving so many of its mysteries in such utterly pedestrian ways. Oh yeah, HAL went nuts not because he was on the verge of sentience, but because some idiot programmed him wrong. Yeah, that's a much more satisfying explanation.
2001 was always intended to be standalone. 2010, even though it was written by Clarke, was basically a cash-in. The movie, being directed by a Hollywood hack not really known for anything else, was an even worse cash-in.
As for the gadgets, it's actually kind of amazing that the gadgets in 2010 seem actually *older* than the gadgets in 2001. Just goes to show how forward-thinking Kubrick was. My guess is they tried to make 2010 seem more "realistic" and possible by putting in gadgets that were familiar at the time the movie was made. So instead of 3D vector-based flat panel screens, they went back to rounded CRT's with chunky, low-res raster graphics. If I remember right, they even replaced some of HAL's displays from 2001 with older CRT's.
The whole movie felt less futuristic (which by now means it just feels old and obsolete) and less important.
What I disliked about 2010: Odyssey Two (the book) was that it was a sequel to 2001 the movie, and not 2001 the book, and thus took place in the vicinity of Jupiter instead of Saturn. But once I got over that fact, I was able to appreciate the overarching story that Clarke was developing, which really came out in 2061: Odyssey Three, the best book in the series. 3001: The Final Odyssey was a HUGE letdown. It explained everything, but it was so anticlimactic the way it was handled, with the final revelation of who sent those monoliths to our solar system and the final fate of Dave Bowman and HAL.
the funniest line is probably hall give me the perforated card... in 2001 IIRC
RIP, ACC.
one thing i always liked was HAL's name
take its name and change it by one letter (ie A->B) and you'll see what i mean.
Does anyone else keep reading "Lenovo" instead of "Leonov"? I mean, it's not far off...
Lenovo
Leonov
Time to replace my T61 with shiny new Lenovo HAL 9000.
HAL -> IBM (SC: "unintentional")
Leonov -> guess yourself
anyone else scared too ??
I think engadget would be remiss to not address the technology from John Carpenters DARK STAR The smart bombs make HAL look like a cheap abacus and you will not find a better carnivorous alien in anything short of Dr Who
The phrase Steve Jobs fears most? "Close the iPod bay doors, HAL"