Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-and-father/

by benbreen • 12 years ago

102 33 12 years ago

rexignis• 12 years ago

If imdb's movie /year/1979/ list is to be believed, there was a lot of self loathing going on in films in the late 70s (i.e. Vietnam).

tjradcliffe• 12 years ago

You have no idea.

One of my favourite 70's quotes is from the quite brilliant book "The Medieval Machine" by the Anglo-French historian Jean Gimpel, published in 1976 (which really is a very good history of Medieval technology):

"The economic depression that struck Europe in the fourteenth century was followed ultimately by economic and technological recovery. But the depression we have moved into will have no end. We can anticipate centuries of decline and exhaustion. There will be no further industrial revolution in the cycles of our Western civilization."

These words were written at the same time as Jobs, Wozniak, Gates and Allen were all hard at work. This smug bastard was just one voice amongst many telling the world that we were in the grip of a permanent, inexorable "malaise" that could at best be accepted passively, which there was no point in fighting, which had to be simply taken as given, unstoppable, forever.

At the same time people like me were being told by teachers that we would never be able to image the disk of extra-solar stars or discover extra-solar planets, and so on [1]. Gleeful murderers of hope were desperately trying to crush any spark of innovation, creativity or freedom. And it was happening the world over. A relentless, ruthless, assault on the Enlightenment, the rule of law, and the industrial revolution.

They failed.

A lot of it was funded, ultimately, by the Soviets, who generated an enormous amount of propaganda that was intended to make people believe these things. One of the notable things that happened after the collapse of the Soviet Empire was the stunning pall of silence that fell over the Left in the West. It was almost as if the lifeblood of the whole enterprise had been cut off.

Part of that was simple empiricism: it was hard for Leftists to hold up their pathologically insane ideas as "better" when their poster-child had just endured a complete and spectacular collapse, including the freeing of a large number of vassal states, all because some shipyard workers in Poland had laid down tools a decade before.

But part of it was also that funding for a bunch of stuff that Comintern paid for (mostly by indirect means, in the same way the US government funds stuff through NGOs today) vanished.

Today, hyper-capitalist brands like Naomi Klein are attempting to resurrect some of the old zombie Soviet ideas, but it's a pretty pathetic effort, full of contradictions and gibberish. They won't have a lot of influence, at the end of the day, and it is my firm belief that we are entering into a century of progress that will make the 19th century look staid and the 20th century look stupid. Having lived through the '70's, this is a good thing to see.

[1] We have done both, and more: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/astronomers-image-lowest...

olavk2• 12 years ago

Are you suggesting the Soviet Union founded covert propaganda to convince the west that exoplanets couldn't exist? Do you have any more information about this? Because on the face of it it sound like the craziest conspiracy theory I've ever heard.

IndianAstronaut• 12 years ago

At the same time people like me were being told by teachers that we would never be able to image the disk of extra-solar stars or discover extra-solar planets, and so on [1]

Wow, I never knew they were so pessimistic about that. I thought the science for visualizing extrasolar planets had always been there, they just needed the equipment built.

Now I wonder what ideas today's pessimists have that will be disproven. Maybe Interstellar travel is really possible?

arethuza2• 12 years ago

Where do people get the idea that everyone on the "Left" was, and apparently continues in some mysterious way to be, an undifferentiated mass totally in thrall to Soviet control?

Charlie Stross puts it quite nicely about the UK Labour party - who were the creators of that enduring socialist endeavour of the UK NHS:

The Conservatives hated and feared the threat of Soviet communism; the Labour Party leadership hated and feared the Soviets even more (as first cousins once removed in the family tree of left wing ideology, they were seen as class traitors by the first generation of Bolsheviks).

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u...

To simply equate socialism with Soviet control was always simplistic and a worldview that caused untold grief - possibly being a contributing factor to the start of the Vietnam War, as argued in A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan.

Edit: The ultimate expression of those on the left as an "undifferentiated mass" was probably the original SIOP which would have attacked all socialist countries even those that weren't on particularly good terms with the Soviets. And even that approach didn't last long - the head of US Marine Corp described attacking people you weren't actually fighting as "This is not the American way".

Vivtek• 12 years ago

This screed is essentially pure-quill mental imbalance. I was in school in America in 1979, too. I subscribed to BYTE, Science 80, the whole nine yards. My teachers were ecstatic about my love for science, not even once trying to dissuade me from my eager pursuit of the future.

So right on the face of it, you're just flat wrong. And then you go right off the rails screeching about Communist influence as though this were anything but raving paranoia.

I'm a liberal Quaker (Quakerism far predates Communism) and - you know what? - I seem to have been left off the distribution list from Moscow.

Basically, all I can think when I read this is that you need to get back on your meds. "Pathologically insane ideas," my ass. How anybody can view liberalism as an attack on the Enlightenment - when it is the Enlightenment - is frankly flabbergasting.

happyscrappy• 12 years ago

There was something surreal about playing Missile Command during the Cold War, you always lost all your cities. The palpable feeling that at any time we could all be incinerated by nukes made everyone a bit jaded. The threat passed but the cynicism stayed on. Even today as progress ascends people insist on doom. Go figure.

mikeash3• 12 years ago

This just needs the addition of the words "sap and impurify" (the sentiment is already there) and it would be perfect.

Joeboy2• 12 years ago

That would be the "most popular" films of 1979, as rated in recent years.

Here's imdb's biggest films of 1979 by US box office:

http://www.imdb.com/search/title?at=0&sort=boxoffice_gross_u...

Alien is thrashed by Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Moonraker. Apocalypse Now is thrashed by The Muppet Movie.

beloch2• 12 years ago

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"The U.S. is not waging the Cold War in outer space. We have no moon colonies, and our supercomputers are not nearly as super as the murderous HAL. "

2001 was a prescient film, but the details have turned out somewhat differently than Kubrick and Clarke imagined. HAL was portrayed as truly sentient. The same cannot be said of any AI existing today. However, HAL was also immensely limited. He was like a servant or child in his abilities. He was not the the oracle and gateway to the sum of all human knowledge, as the computers of today have become. If you asked HAL how to build a boat or how to score a date with a beautiful woman, he'd have been baffled. Google, on the other hand... HAL also had a large central core that could be attacked. If we built a true AI today, it's possible that the brains of such a beast could be the size of a pocket watch and the software copied and transferred freely. If such a viral consciousness had infested the Discovery, Dave would truly have had nothing to strike back against. HAL would not have been a single consciousness, but a legion!

Meanwhile, the U.S. is very much still engaged in a struggle for control of space. Other challengers have appeared, but Russia hasn't gone anywhere, and that particular war seems to be getting colder by the minute. However, the commercialization of space has been late in coming. Pan Am's collapse must have delayed things somewhat. However, it's finally starting to happen.

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"Mother, on the other hand, spends the whole movie like a fated southern belle hooked on laudanum, locked in her room. She can’t even advise on how to defeat the monster. The computer cannot help. No costly investment in heavy capital will keep nature at bay. "

Alien does indeed present a very different view of technology. Where, in 2001, technology was the tool of humanity, uplifting it to greater and greater heights, in Alien technology cannot overcome the base nature of humans. The people in space aren't heroes or explorers, but working-class stiffs trying to make a living. Technology serves its owners first and foremost. The corporation's interests reign supreme, even over the space workers very lives. This vision too is both wrong yet prescient. The computers of today are of tremendous help, but are also tools of control. You can ask google how to do practically anything, but you have to accept the fact that your request will be logged by the NSA (and probably other organizations) for future reference should you ever be naughty. Computers do not directly control us, but other humans use computers to tell us how to do things. For example, look up why UPS drivers are trained to avoid turning left. Computers and automation have eliminated many jobs, but always seem to create even more in the process.

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The last few years have greatly increased my optimism for the future. It seems that we're finally pulling out of the cyberpunk dystopian funk of the last decade or so and trying to do "big" things once again. Electric cars are finally a practical reality. Self driving cars are close at hand. Private space flight is taking off. People are talking about capturing and bringing asteroids down to Earth for their resources. Space elevators that will make getting bulk quantities of material off of Earth seem almost possible. Quantum cryptology is currently in limited use and expanding, and may one day offer us all security from the NSA's of the world, even should they gain the tremendous power of quantum computers, which themselves will offer humanity fantastic new abilities. 3D printing is rapidly improving and making new things possible, and our advances in nanotechnology will only amplify and ramify their capabilities. It's an exciting time to be alive, even in spite of all the nicks and cuts we receive from the other side of every new sword we invent. Humanity needs to keep its ideals and be on guard against the darker half of it's nature, but there are many great reasons to think we might just surprise ourselves and turn out okay after all.

nnq• 12 years ago

Quantum cryptology is currently in limited use and expanding, and may one day offer us all security from the NSA's of the world

..."classic" cryptography done right, and software done right, with verifiable versions of critical components like compilers and kernels, and a few more pieces of technology we already have, but simply "done right", would give all the unbreakable security anyone would need. But "doing things right" is simply suicide (business-wise) in the current economy. Technologies "done right" and "maintained right" from a security perspective have negative economic value for whoever would develop them in the current market system, so unless you're an institution big enough to be both the researcher and the producer and the consumer of such technology you'll never have it.

...and if you are big enough, let's say a big army system, the inefficiencies that make any such big closed systems underperform (bureaucracy, internal corruption, lack of employee motivation etc.) would make security flaws appear into the system.

So the thing to have hope in is this: even if all systems have flaws that your boggie-man (the NSA, let's say) can exploit, the boggie-man himself has flaws that can be exploited.

...so the best guarantee of freedom is a perpetual world-wide cyberwar intense enough to guarantee anyone's secrets and private information always have a certain risk of getting exposed so that no one can afford to keep truly horrible secrets (like torturing people in secret prisons, or routinely violating everyone's privacy!) because they would know that information leakage is at some point inevitable.

Retra2• 12 years ago

This reminds me of the reality of 'criminal convenience.' A criminal isn't going to plan the perfect attack so that they don't get caught; they'll just smash and grab. Firstly, 'doing it right' is expensive. Secondly, there is enough uncertainty in the world and the bottlenecks of human concern are so over-saturated with confusion that nobody will likely catch you anyway.

...so the best guarantee of freedom is a perpetual world-wide cyberwar intense enough to guarantee anyone's secrets and private information always have a certain risk of getting exposed [...]

I feel like this would just entrench cynicism as a way of life. Kind of like it already is: everyone expects bad things to happen and they feel they are inevitable. It doesn't improve anything because so few people believe real improvement is possible. Admittedly, I think that things are getting better.

beloch2• 12 years ago

This depends heavily on the length of time you need a communication to remain unbroken for. Current encryption algorithms are probably strong against determined attackers for years or possibly even decades, but what about several decades? With classical communications, your adversaries can store your coded messages and decrypt them when algorithms/technology permit.

mikerichards• 12 years ago

Heh, I loved the term "truckers in space", which pretty accurately described some of the characters in Alien - Brett, Parker, Dallas.

Speaking of Ridley Scott, my favorite movie of all time is Blade Runner. I was watching it the other day, and noticed that the incept dates of some of replicants were 2016. Oh boy, Ridley got that one wrong. But they still used payphones too, like in Alien. Remember Deckard calling Rachel from the video pay phone at the bar?

So it seems like filmmakers predictions either grossly mispredict the amount of technological progress at the big scale. Everybody thought there would be moon colonies by now, or advanced cyborgs. Or they don't see the technological innovation at the small scale. They can't see things like cell phones, the internet, etc..

I have seen several movies with the 70s or so, with flat screens hanging on the wall. So I guess they ocassionally get things right

rbanffy• 12 years ago

So it seems like filmmakers predictions either grossly mispredict the amount of technological progress at the big scale

It is said sci-fi is less about predicting the future than to preventing it. I'd go more with the idea it's about showing what can be and helping us finding our way there (or out of there).

TheOtherHobbes• 12 years ago

While some people predicted the Internet, or something like it, no one predicted Internet culture.

And I don't think anyone seriously imagined that the Internet would be accessible through a terminal you could carry in your pocket that also worked as a clock, camera, calendar, video and audio phone, calculator, weather forecaster, fitness monitor, games machine, and smart personal assistant.

It's debatable if a moon base would have been better. I suppose a moon base would have created cultural changes of its own, but I'm not convinced they would have been as disruptive as the Internet. (And it's just getting started...)

lifeformed• 12 years ago

I kind of like all the anachronistic elements in old sci-fi movies. It doesn't really feel like an error; it feels more like a stylistic choice. The chunky CRTs and grimy machinery gives the world character, and makes the world feel tangible. I'd take that over a sterile, Apple-eque vision of the future any day (in my fiction, at least).

olavk2• 12 years ago

The sf movie 'Her' has a very Apple-like feel in the production design. Great movie, but of course a totally different feel.

ArkyBeagle2• 12 years ago

In the sequel, "2010", it's revealed that HAL has essentially had a "nervous breakdown" because he'd been lied to. This is apparently true for both the novel and the film.

Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien

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