The Saturday 2004-09-11 at 19:00 -0500, jfweber@bellsouth.net wrote: [very OT]
That was pretty much as Clark described it in a later interview.
He also explained it, albeit somewhat differently, on the first sequel of the novel.
I guess it was a point of reference tho that HAL was NOT any form of a robot, since that programming would have violated the robotic imprimatur. No robot could ever harm a human, etc...
Mmmmm... HAL, together with Discovery, could be argued as a "robot", in the sense that it is a computer with the ability to move and change things, open doors, orientate antennas, fire up the motors, etc. Ie, HAL is not the standard computer with only a console, or even a voice interface.
Of course, a lot of the thinking about plot points etc happened afterwards, as the story for the movie was made up as they went from a brief outline. And the way movies are made is get it on film first and figure out what it means later.
Well, noting that it was made by Kubrick, with Clark as guionist (or whatever), they both spent a good deal of design time on the movie before they started shooting. The idea was to make the best scifi movie possible, and no need to return ever to scifi. K. never made another, I think. Fascinating movie. Perfection. I raise my hat. To stay half on topic, any possibility of a voice interface in Linux? ;-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson