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Sci Fi Professor Discusses '2001' the Movie Versus 2001 Reality

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY)

DOUGLAS RAIN, ACTOR: The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: That, of course, was HAL, the talking computer that goes haywire in "2001: A Space Odyssey," perhaps the most famous computer in the world.

Now, the movie is based on the book by Arthur C. Clarke. It was made back in 1968 and it features a world where there's space travel, space hotels, videoconferencing and computers with artificial intelligence.

Well, now that 2001 has actually arrived, how much of the science fiction in that movie has become science fact?

Joining us now to talk about it is Prof. Emeritus Irving F. "Bud" Foote of the Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly known as Georgia Tech around here. And he's taught science fiction for some 30 years at Georgia Tech.

Thanks for coming in. And happy new year to you, first off.

PROF. IRVING F. "BUD" FOOTE, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: Same to you.

HARRIS: All right, now that the calendar has actually turned up 01/01/01, has it confirmed Arthur Clarke's genius, in your mind?

FOOTE: Well, Arthur Clarke's genius is not primarily -- like most science fiction writers, not primarily a prophet. Science fiction explores possibilities, and there are many possible futures out there, some of them quite nice and some of them quite nasty. And I don't think you judge a book by the accuracy of its predictions. But we can talk about that. HAL is true today in a sense. Computers don't talk to us with quite the fluency.

HARRIS: Right. FOOTE: But, HAL would be a...

HARRIS: They are talking, though.

FOOTE: Yes. And HAL would be a lot smaller today.

HARRIS: Yes.

FOOTE: This is one of the very interesting things. You know, you have more computer muscle on your desk than existed in the world when this movie was made. So HAL would be much smaller. We do have computers that run amok.

HARRIS: Although, now we call them viruses when that happens.

FOOTE: Yes, and this is very interesting, though we generally don't name our computers. I don't address...

HARRIS: I don't know, I've got friends who do. I'm not saying they're all stable, but they do.

FOOTE: ... or describe them graphically, but, you know. But it's interesting that we call these things viruses. In that sense, we've humanized our computers because viruses are something that attack people.

HARRIS: Yes, that's true, yes.

FOOTE: So -- but a virus comes in and a computer can do a great deal of harm, including some life threatening harm. Computer in your car goes bad at a crucial moment...

HARRIS: Yes.

FOOTE: ... you're in big trouble.

HARRIS: And then also, to bring in the space theme as well, the computer goes haywire on the space shuttle...

FOOTE: Yes.

HARRIS: ... you've got the same sort of thing there.

FOOTE: Sure.

HARRIS: But what do you make about that, some of the -- not the predictions, but, if you will, the possibilities that Arthur Clarke brought to our minds when he talked about space travel. He thought that maybe by now we'd have, you know, tourist traveling in space, we'd have hotels, that sort of thing.

FOOTE: Yes, well, I think he hung it on "2001" for a couple of reasons. One of the things you have to realize is the movie and the book were done simultaneously. The movie was not based on the book. The book and the movie were generated together.

HARRIS: Is that right?

FOOTE: Yes.

HARRIS: Now, see, that's something I did not know.

FOOTE: And they were done on the -- they were based on an earlier story by Clarke called "The Sentinel." And "The Sentinel" was that tall, black, enigmatic object that causes...

HARRIS: (OFF-MIKE)

FOOTE: Yes, yes -- that causes early man or pre-man somehow to become human, and then causes humanity, down toward the end of the book and movie, to graduate to something superhuman, or potentially superhuman.

Clarke had a very large mystic streak. It comes out in a number of important stories by him. On the one hand, he wrote very hard science fiction, he was well grounded in science, well grounded in technology. But in a story like in the "Nine Billion Names of God," he shows a real mystic streak. And this makes a very interesting combination, which frustrates some people.

My daughter-in-law said, be sure to tell them that I didn't like the ending and I want my money back.

(LAUGHTER)

And a lot of people reacted that way...

HARRIS: Yes.

FOOTE: ... because, hey, it started out to be hard science fiction with a trace of satire.

HARRIS: Well, let me ask you something. Considering the fact that Arthur Clarke is now -- he's a recluse, I understand. He lives in Sri Lanka.

FOOTE: Yes.

HARRIS: I don't think he's even been seen in public in years. What do you think he would be thinking about the world that we actually have right now versus the one that he imagined back in 1968?

FOOTE: Well, I think he would have said, hey, I wasn't predicting. I do believe -- I think he would still say, I do believe that whatever force caused human beings to quit being glorified monkeys and become, for better or worse, humans -- human beings have a lot of possibilities that monkeys don't have, but they also can do greater evil.

HARRIS: Yes, I know. And we have seen of that; quite a bit of it nowadays.

FOOTE: Oh, yes, in the last century, indeed. HARRIS: Yes.

FOOTE: So whatever that is -- and, you know, different people would say different things: forces of evolution, cosmic consciousness, God, whatever -- that force may operate on us to make us more than we now are. And part of that force, or accessing that force, is going to be technology.

HARRIS: Yes, well, we're at -- pretty much at the limit of our technology for this particular segment. We're out of time now, but thanks much, Prof. Foote. Appreciate the time. And happy new year to you.

FOOTE: It's been nice to come, and happy new year to you.

HARRIS: Thanks. I hope we get a chance to chat again soon.

FOOTE: Indeed.

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