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NASA SpaceLink

What am I -- an expert in human cognition and the design of systems that are usable and understandable -- to make of the technology in 2001? What does it suggest about the interaction between the people and the systems aboard present space platforms? What about HAL? In writing this piece, I am torn about what approach to take. Three possibilities occur to me.

First, I could simply review how well the film forecast future developments, given the fact that much of what we now take for granted did not yet exist in 1968. The creators' extensive production notes show the incredible planning and detail that went into designing the sets and props, even items we see for only a few seconds. The film does an excellent job of capturing the spirit of what routine space travel will probable be like some century or other, even if it is inaccurate in many details. What more could we ask? The spirit is what counts; and in this regard, even the details are superb and add immensely to the overall impact of the story.

A second alternative is to discuss how likely we are to have the technical capabilities the film predicted we would have by the year 2001. The answer is simple -- most unlikely. Some things, of course, we do better today.

Finally, I could explore how we might go about designing technology shown in the film, in the light of significant advances, in many areas, and -- in others -- surprisingly little progress.

Instead of taking one of these approaches, I've chosen to do all three in my comments on some of the human and technical developments we saw in the film and experience in our real lives in the 1990s.


The Technology

I am struck more by the mundane than the profound. What impressed me most in 2001? Why the everyday aspects of space life: the video phone, the use of identification badges, the strangely formal setting of the moon-base conference room, the boredom of the jobs on the space station -- to say nothing of the years of nothingness on the Jupiter probe. The food was bland, and there was no music for the astronauts. (The producers failed to anticipate the Sony Walkman.)

In life, the really difficult parts of technology design are the human and social factors, not the technical ones. So it is with the movie. The technology is handled pretty well, but the makers of 2001 thought that technology was all there was. Make computers faster and faster and, voilà, you have machines capable of human understanding. Get the technology right and all the rest will follow.

Wrong. As I have already noted, artificial intelligences are far from reality. The task of AI has proven far more complex than anyone in the 1960s dreamed. As for space travel, the movie assumes that once it was achieved, long-distance voyages would follow quickly. They failed to consider how long it takes a new technology to build up the infrastructure required to use it routinely. Most technologies take fifty years to develop an infrastructure adequate for everyday use. The movie's writers assumed that by 2001 space flights would be so common that there would be hotels in space. They thought so many travelers would show up on the moon that identification badges and security checks would be needed to enter a station. The spaceships would be so powerful that travelers wouldn't have to worry much about the weight of personal belongings -- notice the lost cashmere sweater at the space station. All these assumptions ignore the tremendous difficulties of building an infrastructure to support such activities -- infrastructure that would take decades to accomplish.