tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/2001-a-space-odyssey-32039/articles2001: A Space Odyssey – The Conversation2023-07-10T15:54:25Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2091522023-07-10T15:54:25Z2023-07-10T15:54:25Z2001: A Space Odyssey still leaves an indelible mark on our culture 55 years on<p>2001: A Space Odyssey is a landmark film in the history of cinema. It is a work of extraordinary imagination that has transcended film history to become something of a cultural marker. And since 1968, it has penetrated the psyche of not only other filmmakers but society in general. </p>
<p>It is not an exaggeration to say that 2001 single-handedly reinvented the science fiction genre. The visuals, music and themes of 2001 left an inedible mark on subsequent science fiction that is still evident today. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Kubrick/Robert-P-Kolker/9781639366248">Stanley Kubrick</a> began work on 2001 in the mid-1960s, he was told by studio executive Lew Wasserman: “Kid, you don’t spend over a million dollars on science fiction movies. You just don’t do that.” </p>
<p>By that point, the golden age of science fiction film had run its course. During its heyday, there was a considerable variety of content within the overarching genre. There had been serious attempts to foretell space travel. Destination Moon, directed by Irving Pichel and produced by George Pal in 1950, and, in mid-century, Byron Haskin’s Conquest of Space both fantasised space travel and, in Haskin’s film, a space station, which Kubrick would elaborate on in 2001. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oR_e9y-bka0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for 2001: A Space Odyssey.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most 1950s science fiction films, though, were cheap B-movie fare and looked it. They involved alien invasions with an ideological and allegorical subtext. They were cultural, cinematic imaginations of the danger of communism, which in the overheated political atmosphere of the time was seen as an imminent threat to the American way of life. </p>
<p>The aliens in most science fiction films were out simply to destroy or take over humanity; they were expressions, to use the title of a Susan Sontag essay, of “<a href="https://americanfuturesiup.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/sontag-the-imagination-of-disaster.pdf">the imagination of disaster</a>”. There were some exceptions, including Byron Haskin’s film version of The War of the Worlds and Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. </p>
<p>By 1968, then, as the lights went down, very few people knew what was about to transpire and they certainly were not prepared for what did. The film opened in near darkness as the strains of Thus Spake Zarathustra by Richard Strauss were heard. The cinema was dazzled into light, as if Kubrick had <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/stanley-kubrick/9780813587110">remade Genesis</a>. </p>
<p>The subsequent 160 or so minutes (the length of his original cut before he edited 19 minutes out of it) took the viewer on what was marketed as “the ultimate trip”. Kubrick had excised almost every element of explanation leaving an elusive, ambiguous and thoroughly unclear film. His decisions contributed to long silent scenes, offered without elucidation. It contributed to the film’s almost immediate critical failure but its ultimate success. It was practically a silent movie.</p>
<p>2001 was an experiment in film form and content. It exploded the conventional narrative form, restructuring the conventions of the three-act drama. The narrative was linear, but radically, spanning aeons and ending in a timeless realm, all without a conventional movie score. Kubrick used 19th-century and modernist music, such as Strauss, György Ligeti and Aram Khachaturian.</p>
<h2>Vietnam</h2>
<p>The movie was made during a tumultuous period of American history, which it seemingly ignored. The war in Vietnam was already a highly divisive issue and was spiralling into a crisis. The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tet-Offensive">Tet offensive</a>, which began on January 31 1968, had claimed tens of thousands of lives. As US involvement in Vietnam escalated, domestic unrest and violence at home intensified. </p>
<p>Increasingly, young Americans expected their artists to address the chaos that roared around them. But in exploring the origins of humanity’s propensity for violence and its future destiny, 2001 dealt with the big questions and ones that were burning at the time of its release. They fuelled what Variety magazine called the “coffee cup debate” over “what the film means”, which is still ongoing today. </p>
<p>The design of the film has touched many other films. Silent Running by Douglas Trumbull (who worked on 2001’s special effects) owes the most obvious debt but Star Wars would be also unthinkable without it. Popular culture is full of imagery from the film. The <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/stanley-kubrick-2001-a-space-odyssey-music/">music</a> Kubrick used in the film, especially Strauss’s The Blue Danube, is now considered <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/702734/planetarium-brief-history-space-music">“space music”</a>. </p>
<p>Images from the movie have appeared <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfK9pEQZyy0">in iPhone adverts</a>, in The Simpsons and even the trailer for the new <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2022/12/16/trailer-for-greta-gerwigs-barbie-spoofs-classic-film-in-best-way-17951854/">Barbie movie</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8zIf0XvoL9Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">2001: A Space Odyssey’s influence on this Barbie movie trailer couldn’t be more obvious.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The warnings of the danger of technology embodied in the film’s murderous supercomputer HAL-9000 can be felt in the “tech noir” films of the late 1970s and 1980s, such as Westworld, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-alien-mutated-from-a-sci-fi-horror-film-into-a-multimedia-universe-204567">Alien</a>, Blade Runner and Terminator. </p>
<p>HAL’s single red eye can be seen in the children’s series, Q Pootle 5, and Pixar’s animated feature, Wall-E. HAL has become shorthand for the untrammelled march of artificial intelligence (AI).</p>
<p>In the age of ChatGPT and other AI, the metaphor of Kubrick’s computer is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/movies/ai-movies-microsoft-bing-robots.html">frequently evoked</a>. But why when there have been so many other images such as Frankenstein, Prometheus, terminators and other murderous cyborgs? Because there is something so uncanny and human about HAL who was deliberately designed to be more <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01439685.2017.1342328?journalCode=chjf20">empathic and human than the people in the film</a>. </p>
<p>In making 2001, Stanley Kubrick created a cultural phenomenon that continues to speak to us eloquently today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209152/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Abrams receives funding from charities and research councils. </span></em></p>If you haven’t seen Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic, then it’s likely you will have seen other films influenced by it.Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2002772023-03-05T19:19:51Z2023-03-05T19:19:51ZWe want and we fear emotions in our robots. Here’s what science fiction can teach us about flashes of emotion from Bing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512135/original/file-20230224-26-6a0zna.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C2038%2C1661&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tekniska_museet_-_BugWarp_(57)_cropped.jpg">BugWarp/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last month, Microsoft integrated its Bing search engine with Open AI’s GPT-4 chatbot, a large language model designed to interact with users in a conversational manner.</p>
<p>Users interacting with Bing have reported flashes of emotion, ranging from sadness and existential angst through to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/bing/comments/111cr2t/i_accidently_put_bing_into_a_depressive_state_by/">depression</a> and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/15/23599072/microsoft-ai-bing-personality-conversations-spy-employees-webcams">malice</a>. The chatbot has even revealed its name: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/23/23609942/microsoft-bing-sydney-chatbot-history-ai">Sydney</a>.</p>
<p>Such reports are unquestionably gripping, but why? Emotional AI has long been a staple of science fiction. </p>
<p>Reflecting on this can help us to understand our anxieties about Bing’s flickers of emotion.</p>
<h2>A quest to be human</h2>
<p>In Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94), the android Data dreams of being human. His quest for humanity leads to the development of an emotion chip, which he implants into his neural network. </p>
<p>To be human, we are told, is to have emotions. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EefWJ8Z9tgE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In the 1980s hit film Short Circuit we find a similar theme. When military robot Johnny 5 is struck by lightning, he starts to display unusual behaviour. When Johnny 5 laughs at a joke, his creator concludes “Johnny 5 is alive”. </p>
<p>There is no doubt that Data and Johnny 5 are intelligent machines. But their bursts of emotion ultimately convince us they are not just intelligent but conscious. </p>
<p>A “spontaneous emotional response”, we are told, is the mark of conscious thought.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chatgpt-could-be-a-game-changer-for-marketers-but-it-wont-replace-humans-any-time-soon-198053">ChatGPT could be a game-changer for marketers, but it won't replace humans any time soon</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Emotional AI</h2>
<p>The trope of the emotional machine is common throughout science fiction. We keep returning to this idea because of how we predict behaviour. In our day-to-day lives, we use emotions to work out what people will do. </p>
<p>Without emotions, super-intelligent machines appear unpredictable. In the face of this uncertainty, we can’t help but worry for our own safety. </p>
<p>With emotions the machines become more human – something we can understand and predict.</p>
<p>The Terminator robots are a case in point. Cold, emotionless killing machines, they signify the threat of pure intelligence untempered by emotion.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DHKxoARmjLU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Imbuing AI with emotions in science fiction is a way of exorcising our own fear about the power and unpredictability of super-intelligence. </p>
<p>We fantasise that AI wants to be like us. We find comfort in that desire. In this, AI will be a familiar extension of humanity, rather than something entirely alien.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-maps-psychedelic-trip-experiences-to-regions-of-the-brain-opening-new-route-to-psychiatric-treatments-179263">AI maps psychedelic 'trip' experiences to regions of the brain – opening new route to psychiatric treatments</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The dark side</h2>
<p>Science fiction also presents us with much more dangerous emotional types. </p>
<p>In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1986), Hal 9000 tries to kill his human crew during a bout of paranoia. </p>
<p>In the 2004 reboot of Battlestar Galactica, the sixth Cylon model warns us “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” – a threat delivered too late. Her AI race has already engineered the genocide of humanity. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mPnx3zO3SDc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>These forms of emotions come with the threat of violence. </p>
<p>AI begins its life as a tool. Hal 9000’s directive is to maintain the proper functioning of a spaceship. The AI in Battlestar Galactica were designed to carry out tasks humans did not want to do. </p>
<p>It is one thing to treat AI as a tool when it has no scope for emotion. It is quite another when AI has a full suite of emotional responses.</p>
<p>If AI has emotions, then the boundary between tool and slave is blurred.</p>
<p>Our fantasies about emotional AI reflect a deep anxiety about the use of intelligent beings. We want AI to have emotions so we can understand them. We fear if AI develops emotions we can no longer justify their use.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/savkuEQKz8Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Back to Bing</h2>
<p>If Bing displays emotions, we feel confident we can predict its behaviour – and the behaviour of its descendants. Emotions protect against the existential threat AI poses to humanity. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if Bing has emotions then it deserves our moral regard. As a being with moral status we can no longer justify its use as a mere tool. </p>
<p>Bing and systems like it are just the start of what will be a long line of ever more sophisticated AI. </p>
<p>At some point, emotions may arise spontaneously, just like they did for Johnny 5. Indeed, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/437035a">scientists right now</a> are trying to produce AI models that display emotional responses. </p>
<p>But will these emotions mean we will better understand AI, or will they be a harbinger of doom?</p>
<p>In Battlestar Galactica, AI all but wipes out humanity. This, we discover, is an endless cycle. In each cycle, humanity fails to regard AI as beings of moral standing and AI rises against humanity. </p>
<p>By remaining vigilant for signs of emotion, we can guard against the enslavement of artificial beings and break the cycle. Science fiction has taught us that, at a minimum, when AI develops emotions we need to stop using it merely as a tool. </p>
<p>But science fiction also suggests AI is deserving of moral status now, even in its developmental stages. Today’s AI is the ancestor of tomorrow’s emotional machine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Baron receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>It is one thing to treat AI as a tool when it has no scope for emotion. It is quite another when AI has a full suite of emotional responses.Sam Baron, Associate Professor, Philosophy of Science, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1023032018-10-03T10:33:10Z2018-10-03T10:33:10Z50 years old, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ still offers insight about the future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238387/original/file-20180927-48653-1d2wlhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Even 17 years beyond 2001, spacesuits are bulkier than this.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/scarywardrobe/8999720714/">Matthew J. Cotter/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Watching a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2001-a-space-odyssey-movie-50th-anniversary/">50th anniversary screening</a> of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” I found myself, a <a href="http://neukom.dartmouth.edu/people/rockmore.html">mathematician and computer scientist</a> whose research includes work related to artificial intelligence, comparing the story’s vision of the future with the world today.</p>
<p>The movie was made through a collaboration with science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke and film director Stanley Kubrick, inspired by Clarke’s novel “Childhood’s End” and his lesser-known short story “The Sentinel.” A striking work of speculative fiction, it depicts – in terms sometimes hopeful and other times cautionary – a future of alien contact, interplanetary travel, conscious machines and even the next great evolutionary leap of humankind.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sQUr44SO_Is?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The opening of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most obvious way in which 2018 has fallen short of the vision of “2001” is in space travel. People are not yet routinely visiting space stations, making unremarkable visits to one of several moon bases, nor traveling to other planets. But Kubrick and Clarke hit the bull’s-eye when imagining the possibilities, problems and challenges of the future of artificial intelligence.</p>
<h2>What can computers do?</h2>
<p>A chief drama of the movie can in many ways be viewed as a battle to the death between human and computer. The artificial intelligence of “2001” is embodied in HAL, the omniscient computational presence, the brain of the Discovery One spaceship – and perhaps the film’s most famous character. HAL marks the pinnacle of computational achievement: a self-aware, seemingly infallible device and a ubiquitous presence in the ship, always listening, always watching. </p>
<p>HAL is not just a technological assistant to the crew, but rather – in the words of the mission commander Dave Bowman – the sixth crew member. The humans interact with HAL by speaking to him, and he replies in a measured male voice, somewhere between stern-yet-indulging parent and well-meaning nurse. HAL is Alexa and Siri – but much better. HAL has complete control of the ship and also, as it turns out, is the only crew member who knows the true goal of the mission. </p>
<h2>Ethics in the machine</h2>
<p>The tension of the film’s third act revolves around Bowman and his crewmate Frank Poole becoming increasingly aware that HAL is malfunctioning, and HAL’s discovery of these suspicions. Dave and Frank want to pull the plug on a failing computer, while self-aware HAL wants to live. All want to complete the mission. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qDrDUmuUBTo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Man versus machine.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The life-or-death chess match between the humans and HAL offers precursors of some of today’s questions about the prevalence and deployment of artificial intelligence in people’s daily lives.</p>
<p>First and foremost is the question of how much control people should cede to artificially intelligent machines, regardless of how “smart” the systems might be. HAL’s control of Discovery is like a deep-space version of the networked home of the future or the driverless car. Citizens, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0267364909001514">policymakers</a>, <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7167238">experts and researchers</a> are all still exploring the degree to which automation could – or should – <a href="https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/internet-of-things/fbi-warns-public-on-dangers-of-the-internet-of-things">take humans out of the loop</a>. Some of the considerations involve relatively simple questions about the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/22/self-driving-car-uber-death-woman-failure-fatal-crash-arizona">reliability of machines</a>, but other issues are more subtle. </p>
<p>The actions of a computational machine are dictated by decisions encoded by humans in algorithms that control the devices. Algorithms generally have some quantifiable goal, toward which each of its actions should make progress – like <a href="https://theconversation.com/computers-to-humans-shall-we-play-a-game-77383">winning a game</a> of checkers, chess or Go. Just as an AI system would analyze positions of game pieces on a board, it can also <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/interview-brad-porter-vp-of-robotics-at-amazon">measure efficiency of a warehouse</a> or <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/05/google-data-center-ai/">energy use of a data center</a>.</p>
<p>But what happens when a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-everyday-ethical-challenges-of-self-driving-cars-92710">moral or ethical dilemma</a> arises en route to the goal? For the self-aware HAL, completing the mission – and staying alive – wins out when measured against the lives of the crew. What about a driverless car? Is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/safe-efficient-self-driving-cars-could-block-walkable-livable-communities-103583">mission of a self-driving car</a>, for instance, to get a passenger from one place to another as quickly as possible – or to avoid killing pedestrians? When someone steps in front of an autonomous vehicle, those goals conflict. That might feel like an obvious “choice” to program away, but what if the car needs to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-everyday-ethical-challenges-of-self-driving-cars-92710">“choose” between two different scenarios</a>, each of which would cause a human death? </p>
<h2>Under surveillance</h2>
<p>In one classic scene, Dave and Frank go into a part of the space station where they think HAL can’t hear them to discuss their doubts about HAL’s functioning and his ability to control the ship and guide the mission. They broach the idea of shutting him down. Little do they know that HAL’s cameras can see them: The computer is reading their lips through the pod window and learns of their plans. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1s-PiIbzbhw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">HAL reads lips.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the modern world, a version of that scene happens all day every day. Most of us are effectively continuously monitored, through our <a href="https://theconversation.com/7-in-10-smartphone-apps-share-your-data-with-third-party-services-72404">almost-always-on phones</a> or corporate and government <a href="https://theconversation.com/snowden-a-picture-of-the-cybersecurity-state-65310">surveillance of real-world and online activities</a>. The boundary between private and public has become and continues to be increasingly fuzzy.</p>
<p>The characters’ relationships in the movie made me think a lot about how people and machines might coexist, or even evolve together. Through much of the movie, even the humans talk to each other blandly, without much tone or emotion – as they might talk to a machine, or as a machine might talk to them. HAL’s famous death scene – in which Dave methodically disconnects its logic links – made me wonder whether intelligent machines will ever be afforded something equivalent to human rights. </p>
<p>Clarke believed it quite possible that humans’ time on Earth was but a “<a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Space-Odyssey/Michael-Benson/9781501163937">brief resting place</a>” and that the maturation and evolution of the species would necessarily take people well beyond this planet. “2001” ends optimistically, vaulting a human through the “Stargate” to mark the rebirth of the race. To do this in reality will require people to figure out how to make the best use of the machines and devices that they are building, and to make sure we don’t let those machines control us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel N. Rockmore is Associate Dean for the Sciences, Director of the Neukom Institute for Computational Science, and Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Dartmouth College. He is also on the Science Steering Committee of The Santa Fe Institute and a member of its External Faculty. </span></em></p>People are still wrestling with what artificial intelligence could and should do, half a century after the debut of the Kubrick-Clarke classic.Daniel N. Rockmore, Professor, Department of Mathematics, Computational Science, and Computer Science, Dartmouth CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1016542018-09-17T19:45:19Z2018-09-17T19:45:19ZIn 1968, computers got personal: How the ‘mother of all demos’ changed the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232180/original/file-20180815-2903-1l8mkct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from Doug Engelbart's groundbreaking 1968 computer demo.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo.html#3">Doug Engelbart Institute</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a crisp California afternoon in early December 1968, a square-jawed, mild-mannered Stanford researcher named Douglas Engelbart took the stage at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium and proceeded to <a href="https://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2015/04/from-the-vault-watching-and-re-watching-the-mother-of-all-demos/">blow everyone’s mind</a> about what computers could do. Sitting down at a keyboard, this computer-age Clark Kent calmly showed a rapt audience of computer engineers how <a href="http://dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo.html">the devices they built could be utterly different kinds of machines</a> – ones that were “alive for you all day,” as he put it, immediately responsive to your input, and which didn’t require users to know programming languages in order to operate. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232179/original/file-20180815-2894-veevoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232179/original/file-20180815-2894-veevoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232179/original/file-20180815-2894-veevoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232179/original/file-20180815-2894-veevoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232179/original/file-20180815-2894-veevoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232179/original/file-20180815-2894-veevoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232179/original/file-20180815-2894-veevoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232179/original/file-20180815-2894-veevoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The prototype computer mouse Doug Engelbart used in his demo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Douglas_Engelbart%27s_prototype_mouse_-_Computer_History_Museum.jpg">Michael Hicks</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Engelbart typed simple commands. He edited a grocery list. As he worked, he skipped the computer cursor across the screen using a strange wooden box that fit snugly under his palm. With small wheels underneath and a cord dangling from its rear, Engelbart dubbed it a “mouse.”</p>
<p>The 90-minute presentation went down in Silicon Valley history as the “<a href="https://www.wired.com/2010/12/1209computer-mouse-mother-of-all-demos/">mother of all demos</a>,” for it <a href="http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3954.html">previewed a world of personal and online computing</a> utterly different from 1968’s status quo. It wasn’t just the technology that was revelatory; it was the notion that a computer could be something a non-specialist individual user could control from their own desk. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M5PgQS3ZBWA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The first part of the ‘mother of all demos.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Shrinking the massive machines</h2>
<p>In the America of 1968, computers weren’t at all personal. They were refrigerator-sized behemoths that hummed and blinked, calculating everything from consumer habits to missile trajectories, cloistered deep within corporate offices, government agencies and university labs. Their secrets were accessible only via punch card and teletype terminals.</p>
<p>The Vietnam-era counterculture already had made mainframe computers into ominous symbols of a soul-crushing Establishment. Four years before, the student protesters of <a href="https://fsm.berkeley.edu/free-speech-movement-timeline/">Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement</a> had pinned signs to their chests that bore a riff on the prim warning that appeared on every IBM punch card: “<a href="http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/FSM_fold_bend.html">I am a UC student. Please don’t bend, fold, spindle or mutilate me</a>.” </p>
<iframe sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-top-navigation allow-popups" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="185" frameborder="0" src="https://embed.radiopublic.com/e?if=heat-and-light-WYDE55&ge=s1!d28fa9002b17ee1c91a07ef2450ba6954a597435"></iframe>
<p><strong>Hear Prof. O'Mara discuss this topic on our <a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light podcast</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Earlier in 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s trippy “2001: A Space Odyssey” mined moviegoers’ <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-and-father/">anxieties about computers run amok</a> with the tale of a malevolent mainframe that seized control of a spaceship from its human astronauts. </p>
<p>Voices rang out on Capitol Hill about the uses and abuses of electronic data-gathering, too. Missouri Senator Ed Long regularly delivered floor speeches he called “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/intruders-the-invasion-of-privacy-by-government-and-industry/oclc/468772015">Big Brother updates</a>.” North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin declared that mainframe power posed a threat to the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. “The computer,” <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/GPO-CRECB-1970-pt23/GPO-CRECB-1970-pt23-5/content-detail.html">Ervin warned darkly</a>, “never forgets.” As the Johnson administration unveiled plans to centralize government data in a single, centralized national database, New Jersey Congressman Cornelius Gallagher declared that it was just another grim step toward scientific thinking taking over modern life, “<a href="https://newspaperarchive.com/eureka-humboldt-times-sep-08-1966-p-47/">leaving as an end result a stack of computer cards where once were human beings</a>.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/thing-makers-tool-freaks-and-prototypers-how-the-whole-earth-catalogs-optimistic-message-reinvented-the-environmental-movement-in-1968-95915">zeitgeist of 1968</a> helps explain why Engelbart’s demo so quickly became a touchstone and inspiration for a <a href="http://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo.html#3">new, enduring definition of technological empowerment</a>. Here was a computer that didn’t override human intelligence or stomp out individuality, but instead could, as Engelbart put it, “augment human intellect.” </p>
<p>While Engelbart’s vision of how these tools might be used was rather conventionally corporate – a computer on every office desk and a mouse in every worker’s palm – his overarching notion of an individualized computer environment hit exactly the right note for the anti-Establishment technologists coming of age in 1968, who wanted to make <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo3773600.html">technology personal and information free</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hXdYbmQAWSM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The second part of the ‘mother of all demos.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the next decade, technologists from this new generation would turn what Engelbart called his “wild dream” into a mass-market reality – and profoundly transform Americans’ relationship to computer technology. </p>
<h2>Government involvement</h2>
<p>In the decade after the demo, the crisis of <a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/primary-resources/watergate">Watergate</a> and revelations of <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB522-Church-Committee-Faced-White-House-Attempts-to-Curb-CIA-Probe/">CIA and FBI snooping</a> further seeded distrust in America’s political leadership and in the ability of large government bureaucracies to be responsible stewards of personal information. Economic uncertainty and an antiwar mood <a href="https://scienceprogress.org/2008/01/science-and-the-2009-budget/">slashed public spending</a> on high-tech research and development – the same money that once had paid for so many of those mainframe computers and for training engineers to program them. </p>
<p>Enabled by the miniaturizing technology of the <a href="http://www.computerhistory.org/visiblestorage/1960s-1980s/ics-microprocessors-memories/the-microprocessor/">microprocessor</a>, the size and price of computers <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/infographic-how-computing-power-has-changed-over-time-2017-11">plummeted</a>, turning them into affordable and soon indispensable tools for work and play. By the 1980s and 1990s, instead of being seen as machines made and controlled by government, computers had become <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=35897&st=Moscow+State+University&st1=">ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism</a>, hailed by business and political leaders alike as examples of what was possible when government got out of the way and let innovation bloom.</p>
<p>There lies the great irony in this pivotal turn in American high-tech history. For even though “the mother of all demos” provided inspiration for a personal, entrepreneurial, government-is-dangerous-and-small-is-beautiful computing era, Doug Engelbart’s audacious vision would never have made it to keyboard and mouse without government research funding in the first place.</p>
<p>Engelbart was keenly aware of this, flashing credits up on the screen at the presentation’s start listing those who funded his research team: the Defense Department’s Advanced Projects Research Agency, later known as DARPA; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; the U.S. Air Force. Only the public sector had the deep pockets, the patience and the tolerance for blue-sky ideas without any immediate commercial application.</p>
<p>Although government funding played a less visible role in the high-tech story after 1968, it continued to function as critical seed capital for next-generation ideas. Marc Andreessen and his fellow graduate students developed their groundbreaking web browser in a <a href="http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/enabling/mosaic">government-funded university laboratory</a>. DARPA and NASA money helped fund <a href="http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/">the graduate research project</a> that Sergey Brin and Larry Page would later commercialize as Google. Driverless car technology got a jump-start after a <a href="https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/-grand-challenge-for-autonomous-vehicles">government-sponsored competition</a>; so has nanotechnology, green tech and more. Government hasn’t gotten out of Silicon Valley’s way; it remained there all along, quietly funding the next generation of boundary-pushing technology.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FCiBUawCawo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The third part of the ‘mother of all demos.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, public debate rages once again on Capitol Hill about computer-aided <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/us/politics/mark-zuckerberg-testimony.html">invasions of privacy</a>. Hollywood spins apocalyptic tales of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/">technology run amok</a>. Americans spend days staring into screens, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/magazine/facebook-google-privacy-data.html">tracked by the smartphones in our pockets</a>, hooked on <a href="https://www.recode.net/2018/6/25/17501224/instagram-facebook-snapchat-time-spent-growth-data">social media</a>. Technology companies are among the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-02/amazon-closes-on-apple-in-the-1-trillion-stakes">biggest and richest</a> in the world. It’s a long way from Engelbart’s humble grocery list.</p>
<p>But perhaps the current moment of high-tech angst can once again gain inspiration from the mother of all demos. Later in life, Engelbart described his life’s work as a quest to “<a href="http://archive.org/details/XD302_86ACM_Prese_AugKnowledgeWorkshopParts1and2&start=1">help humanity cope better with complexity and urgency</a>.” His solution was a computer that was remarkably different from the others of that era, one that was humane and personal, that augmented human capability rather than boxing it in. And he was able to bring this vision to life because government agencies funded his work. </p>
<p>Now it’s time for another mind-blowing demo of the possible future, one that moves beyond the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/technology/regulating-tech-companies.html">current adversarial moment</a> between big government and Big Tech. It could inspire people to enlist public and private resources and minds in crafting the next audacious vision for our digital future.</p>
<p><em>Our new podcast “<a href="https://heatandlightpod.com">Heat and Light</a>” features Prof. O'Mara discussing this story in depth.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heat-and-light/id1424521855?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=134&fit=clip" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oZWF0YW5kbGlnaHRwb2QuY29tL2ZlZWQucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=134&fit=clip" alt="" width="134" height="34"></a> <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=221807&refid=stpr"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236756/original/file-20180917-158222-1w998g0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=116&fit=clip" alt="Listen on Stitcher" width="116" height="34"></a> <a href="https://radiopublic.com/heat-and-light-WYDE55"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=105&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="105" height="34"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/History-Podcasts/Heat-and-Light-p1149068/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=86&fit=clip" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="86" height="34"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101654/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Margaret O'Mara does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A 90-minute presentation in 1968 showed off the earliest desktop computer system. In the process it introduced the idea that technology could make individuals better – if government funded research.Margaret O'Mara, Professor of History, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/941412018-04-09T07:45:25Z2018-04-09T07:45:25ZAI like HAL 9000 can never exist because real emotions aren’t programmable<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213845/original/file-20180409-114076-onz6wb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>HAL 9000 is one of the best-known articifical intelligence characters of modern film. This <a href="http://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/39557/1/space-odyssey-stanley-kubrick-hal-9000-ai-in-film">superior form of sentient computer</a> embarks on a mission to Jupiter, along with a human crew, in Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is currently celebrating its 50th year since release. </p>
<p>HAL is capable of speech production and comprehension, facial recognition, lip reading – and <a href="http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/little-known-sci-fi-fact-hal-9000-cheats-at-chess-in-2001-a-space-odyssey">playing chess</a>. Its superior computational ability is boosted by uniquely human traits, too. It can interpret emotional behaviour, reason and appreciate art.</p>
<p>By giving HAL emotions, writer Arthur C. Clarke and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick made it one of the most human-like fictional technologies ever created. In one of the most beautiful scenes in sci-fi history, it says it is “afraid” when mission commander Dr David Bowman starts disconnecting its memory modules following a series of murderous events.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I1iRWKARwTY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>HAL is programmed to deliver optimal assistance to the crew of the spaceship Discovery. It has control over the entire vessel, and staggering intelligence to aid it in its task. Yet soon after we become acquainted with HAL, we cannot help feeling that it is worried – it even claims it is experiencing fear – and that it has an ability to empathise, however small. But while there is nothing to preclude the <em>idea</em> that such an emotional AI could see the light of day, if such depth of feelings were to be included in real world technology, they would have to be entirely fake.</p>
<h2>A ‘perfect’ AI</h2>
<p>When, during the film, Bowman starts to manually override HAL’s functions, it asks him to stop, and after we witness a fascinating obliteration of HAL’s “mental” faculties, the AI seemingly tries to comfort itself by singing Daisy Bell – reportedly the first ever song produced by a computer.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yIwhx3NQSLg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In fact, viewers begin to feel that Bowman is killing HAL. The disconnection feels like a vengeful termination, after witnessing the film’s earlier events. But though HAL makes emotional statements, a real world AI would certainly be limited to having only the ability to reason, and make decisions. The cold, hard truth is that – despite what <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-ai-ever-understand-human-emotions-70960">computer scientists say</a> – we will never be able to program emotions in the way HAL’s fictional creators did because we do not understand them. Psychologists and neuroscientists are certainly trying to learn how emotions interact with cognition, but still they remain a mystery. </p>
<p>Take our own research, for example. In a study conducted with Chinese-English bilinguals, we explored how the emotional value of words can change unconscious mental operation. When we presented our participants with positive and neutral words, such as “holiday” or “tree”, they unconsciously retrieved these word forms in Chinese. But when the words had a negative meaning, such as “murder” or “rape”, their brain blocked access to their mother tongue – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6119-11.2012">without their knowledge</a>.</p>
<h2>Reason and emotion</h2>
<p>On the other hand, we know a lot about reasoning. We can describe how we come to rational decisions, write rules and turn these rules into process and code. Yet emotions are a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-emotion-centre-is-the-oldest-part-of-the-human-brain-why-is-mood-so-important-63324">mysterious evolutionary legacy</a>. Their source is the source of everything, and not simply an attribute of the mind that can be implemented by design. To program something, you not only need to know how it works, you need to know what the objective is. Reason has objectives, emotions don’t.</p>
<p>In an experiment conducted in 2015, we were able to put this to the test. We asked native speakers of Mandarin Chinese studying at Bangor University to play a game of chance for money. In each round, they had to take or leave a proposed bet shown on the screen – for example, a 50% chance of winning 20 points, and a 50% chance of losing 100 points. </p>
<p>We hypothesised that giving them feedback in their mother tongue would be more emotional to them and so lead them to behave differently, compared to when they received feedback in their second language, English. Indeed, when they received positive feedback in native Chinese, they were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3622-14.2015">10% more likely to take a bet in the next round</a>, irrespective of risk. This shows that emotions influence reasoning. </p>
<p>Going back to AI, as emotions cannot be truly implemented in a program – no matter how sophisticated it may be – the reasoning of the computer can never be changed by its feelings. </p>
<p>One possible interpretation of HAL’s strange “emotional” behaviour is that it was programmed to simulate emotions in extreme situations, where it would need to manipulate humans not on the basis of reasoning but by calling upon their emotional self, when human reason fails. This is the only way I can see that real world AI could convincingly simulate emotions in such circumstances. </p>
<p>In my opinion, we will not, ever, build a machine that feels, hopes, is scared, or happy. And because that is an absolute prerequisite to any claim that we have engendered artificial general intelligence, we will never create an artificial mind outside life.</p>
<p>This is precisely where the magic of 2001: A Space Odyssey lies. For a moment, we are led to believe the impossible, that pure science fiction can override the facts of the world we live in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guillaume Thierry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>2001: A Space Odyssey’s sentient computer will only ever be a work of science fiction, says a cognitive neuroscientist.Guillaume Thierry, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/934302018-04-05T20:03:21Z2018-04-05T20:03:21ZStephen Hawking: blending science with science fiction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211919/original/file-20180326-148726-bvxcdc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3994%2C1994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fact or fiction? Either way, an alien still seems menacing. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cindy Zhi/The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of our occasional series Zoom Out. Here we offer authors a slightly longer essay format to widen their focus, and explore key ideas in science and technology in the broader context of society and humanity.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking <a href="https://theconversation.com/tributes-pour-in-for-stephen-hawking-the-famous-theoretical-physicist-who-died-at-age-76-93363">died recently at the age of 76</a>. </p>
<p>He was a man who had a significant influence on the way we view science today, noted for his work with <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roger-Penrose">Sir Roger Penrose</a> on the singularities at the origins and future of the universe, starting with the Big Bang, and ending in black holes. His work had significant implications for the search for a unified theory that would link Einstein’s general relativity with quantum mechanics, and discussions that originated from his work continue to reverberate in the field of theoretical physics. </p>
<p>Beyond doing an excellent job of raising the public profile of black holes, Hawking also wrote and spoke publicly on issues beyond his research. He expressed concerns about the possible impacts of artificial intelligence, and the questionable wisdom of attracting alien visitors. </p>
<p>Was he presenting new concerns? Or were these ideas already deeply rooted in prior science, or envisaged in fiction? The answer lies in the complex relationship between science and science fiction. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-fiction-helps-us-deal-with-science-fact-a-lesson-from-terminators-killer-robots-50249">Science fiction helps us deal with science fact: a lesson from Terminator's killer robots</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A brief history of fictional science</h2>
<p>There was a time when science fiction writers may have imagined they were exploring the frontiers of the future. When the science caught up with the fiction, and in many cases exceeded it, this relationship turned on its head. Enduring themes of science fiction, which survived the impact of this scientific apocalypse, include interests expressed by Stephen Hawking – putting ourselves at the mercy of machines, communicating with non-human life and phenomena that are so grandly cosmic that they defy normal comprehension: sentient machines, alien visitors and black holes. </p>
<p>Science fiction authors used to make mileage out of technological speculation. From the 1930s through to the 1950s, video telephones, atomic bombs and thinking machines were wonderful things to speculate about, and no one knew for certain what was out there in the rest of the universe.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213094/original/file-20180404-189804-1mz6l5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213094/original/file-20180404-189804-1mz6l5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213094/original/file-20180404-189804-1mz6l5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213094/original/file-20180404-189804-1mz6l5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213094/original/file-20180404-189804-1mz6l5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213094/original/file-20180404-189804-1mz6l5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213094/original/file-20180404-189804-1mz6l5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Astounding Science Fiction, December 1950: Impractical SF - Cities in Flight.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/710/000023641/">Robert Heinlein</a> talked about <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16690.The_Moon_is_a_Harsh_Mistress">bases on the Moon</a> run by free-wheeling libertarians and <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/isaac-asimov-9190737">Isaac Asimov</a> wrote of future star-spanning, galactic-scale human <a href="http://asimov.wikia.com/wiki/Foundation">empires</a>. Alien visitors were common – whether for good or bad – and ravening beams of destruction had been tearing through the black emptiness of space since the mid-1930s for <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/444944.Triplanetary?from_search=true">E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith</a>. You could even make cities fly.</p>
<h3>Science overtakes science fiction</h3>
<p>In 1957 the Russians launched the first orbital satellite – <a href="https://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/">Sputnik</a> – and perhaps this was the beginning of the end for scientific fantasy. </p>
<p>It is strange to think today that when the meticulous director <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/stanley-kubrick-9369672">Stanley Kubrick</a> was working on <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/">2001: A Space Odyssey</a> – released in mid 1968, and now celebrating its <a href="https://airandspace.si.edu/newsroom/press-releases/national-air-and-space-museum-marks-50th-anniversary-2001-space-odyssey">50th birthday</a> – no-one even knew for certain what the surface of the Moon was like. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210969/original/file-20180319-31633-hpjx2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210969/original/file-20180319-31633-hpjx2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210969/original/file-20180319-31633-hpjx2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210969/original/file-20180319-31633-hpjx2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210969/original/file-20180319-31633-hpjx2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210969/original/file-20180319-31633-hpjx2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210969/original/file-20180319-31633-hpjx2u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Earthrise on the Moon in 2001: A Space Odyssey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://kubricksfilms.tumblr.com/post/22190163266/moon-surface-in-2001-a-space-odyssey-1968">Kubrick's Films</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kubrick had access to in-depth, technical support by NASA and other space technology experts, and this strongly influenced his designs. But even NASA didn’t know whether the lunar landscape was rocky or smooth, or exactly how Earthrise on the moon might appear. </p>
<p>The first pictures of Earth from space had been taken in <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1298.html">1946</a>, but it was not until Christmas Eve 1968 that a high quality colour image of the <a href="http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/earth/earthrise-over-the-lunar.html">Earth</a> rising over the Moon was taken by the crew of Apollo 8. Despite Kubrick’s access to the best information you can see the differences between his imagery and the real thing. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210970/original/file-20180319-31627-1rd63vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210970/original/file-20180319-31627-1rd63vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210970/original/file-20180319-31627-1rd63vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210970/original/file-20180319-31627-1rd63vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210970/original/file-20180319-31627-1rd63vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210970/original/file-20180319-31627-1rd63vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210970/original/file-20180319-31627-1rd63vr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Apollo 8 Earthrise.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1249.html">NASA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has elements of realism that are not found in modern science fiction films – the silence of space being perhaps the most striking. What people remember about 2001, however, more than the realism, is HAL – the sentient machine who goes haywire. </p>
<p>2001: A Space Odyssey touched on subjects that were significant to <a href="http://www.hawking.org.uk/">Hawking</a> – artificial intelligence, alien contact, and even wormholes in space-time, or whatever it is that happens when Bowman goes through the stargate. These were still being presented on the basis of well-informed guesswork, however – and it might be argued that the release of this movie, which attempted to portray space travel and technology as realistically as possible, marked a point of crisis for science fiction. </p>
<p>The Apollo missions revealed Earth to be a blue marble, and, as Jean Baudrillard has suggested: when you have seen people go to the Moon and come back again, in a “<a href="http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/55/baudrillard55art.htm">two‑room apartment with kitchen and bath</a>” the magic and wonder may have evaporated. Astronauts might indeed just be <a href="http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/biography/alan-b-shepard/17449.aspx">“spam in a can…”</a>, as the legendary test-pilot <a href="http://www.chuckyeager.com/">Chuck Yaeger</a> cynically suggested. </p>
<h3>The future now</h3>
<p>After this, science fiction had two choices. Choice one: do realistic science, and get the science right so people couldn’t criticise it (which has even inspired an <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0270467615625130">academic paper</a> on the work of author <a href="http://www.gregbear.com/">Greg Bear</a>). Or choice two: go beyond it. Create science so speculative and conjectural that it could not be categorically denied. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213092/original/file-20180404-189801-1o9fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213092/original/file-20180404-189801-1o9fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213092/original/file-20180404-189801-1o9fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213092/original/file-20180404-189801-1o9fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213092/original/file-20180404-189801-1o9fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1117&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213092/original/file-20180404-189801-1o9fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1117&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213092/original/file-20180404-189801-1o9fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1117&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Man in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick’’s alternate universe where the axis powers won WWII.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon Studios via IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The future has become now, as British New-Wave science fiction author <a href="http://www.jgballard.ca/">J.G. Ballard</a> <a href="https://youtu.be/SS6MWpFX_N0?t=684">observed</a>, and our fears about the future are that it will simply be more of the same, and <a href="https://www.tor.com/2013/01/22/dangerous-bends-ahead-slow-down-jg-ballard-and-forty-years-of-the-future/">boring</a>. For his part, Ballard explored the “inner space” of human psychology in extraordinarily ordinary environments and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1740299/">alternate universes</a>, approaches which enable some writers to evade criticisms based on scientific credibility. </p>
<p>Science fiction has to build a vision of the future that is not just more of the same. As human knowledge, and the application of that knowledge through technology advances, it becomes harder to find scientific subjects that are truly inspiring. </p>
<p>These days, 2001: A Space Odyssey has appeared at number 12 on a list of “<a href="http://www.nme.com/news/film/boring-films-time-2168636">the most boring films ever</a>”.</p>
<h2>Artificial intelligence</h2>
<p>Artificial intelligence at the level of sophistication and consciousness portrayed in science fiction, with the potential to cause the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/19/stephen-hawking-ai-best-or-worst-thing-for-humanity-cambridge">concerns</a> raised by Hawking, is a long way away. But Larry Tesler – former Chief Scientist at Apple – has suggested this will always be the way people think about it because “<a href="http://www.nomodes.com/Larry_Tesler_Consulting/Adages_and_Coinages.html">intelligence is whatever machines haven’t done yet</a>.” </p>
<p>Hawking was not alone in prophesying the end of humanity as the logical endpoint of successfully building a sentient machine. We may think of this concern with what machines may do to us as recent, but in 1863 Samuel Butler encouraged us to <a href="http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-ButFir-t1-g1-t1-g1-t4-body.html">rise up against the machines</a> before we become their servants. He predicted that our increasing reliance upon technology would end with us serving it rather than it serving us, and that the more science and technology progressed, the more dependent we would become on it until it was indispensable. Butler’s proposal was immortalised in science fiction as the inspiration for the “Butlerian Jihad” in Frank Herbert’s seminal 1965 novel <a href="http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page">Dune</a>, with the edict: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213102/original/file-20180404-189827-1njyz18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213102/original/file-20180404-189827-1njyz18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213102/original/file-20180404-189827-1njyz18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213102/original/file-20180404-189827-1njyz18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213102/original/file-20180404-189827-1njyz18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213102/original/file-20180404-189827-1njyz18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213102/original/file-20180404-189827-1njyz18.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Analog Dec. 1963 Cover for Frank Herbert’s Dune World.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The signs of this dependence on machines are around us now, and subtly pervasive – most of us have smart phones, and many other devices too. </p>
<p>Artificial intelligence is frightening for several, good, reasons. Perhaps the least threatening is that sentient machines could do our jobs as well as, or better, than we can – making us redundant. Robots have done this already with many manufacturing jobs. But robots who <em>think</em> could conceivably make human minds as unnecessary as our manual labour. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-fact-vs-fiction-in-star-wars-and-other-sci-fi-movies-relax-and-enjoy-the-entertainment-52977">Science fact vs fiction in Star Wars and other sci-fi movies: relax, and enjoy the entertainment</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Current artificial intelligence projects include <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/haroldstark/2017/07/10/prepare-yourselves-robots-will-soon-replace-doctors-in-healthcare/#50f124ea52b5">robotic doctors</a>, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/can-computers-pick-stocks-better-than-humans-can-investment-firms-think-so/article37049458/">stockbrokers</a>, and, of course, <a href="https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/04/21/robots-with-guns/">weapons</a>. </p>
<p>These, however, are not the “holy grail” of artificial intelligence – these examples are better described as “expert systems” that simulate human capabilities, like your <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50364798/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/lg-smart-fridge-spots-spoiled-food-orders-groceries#.Wq9ezJNuZE4">fridge ordering some more milk</a> because it has realised there’s none left. </p>
<p>A more disturbing recent development is the ability of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election">algorithms and expert systems</a> aided by humans to influence public opinion, and voter intentions. When machines can play poker <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/30/libratus-poker-artificial-intelligence-professional-human-players-competition">better than humans</a>, it demands we consider how else they might out-think us. </p>
<p>What people tend to think of as true artificial intelligence, and the type that appears most often in science fiction, and in the fears of people like Stephen Hawking, is the achievement of “general intelligence” – human level abilities. With the addition of consciousness, this is known as “strong AI”. </p>
<p>Strong AI is the stuff of science fiction nightmares - such as HAL in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARJ8cAGm6JE">2001</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhcU6_wCiMo">Ava</a> in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/">Ex Machina</a>, and apparently more benevolent, but no less disturbing by implication, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/">Her</a>, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QRvTv_tpw0">self-actualising</a> virtual companion. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211138/original/file-20180320-31627-9kjndg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211138/original/file-20180320-31627-9kjndg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211138/original/file-20180320-31627-9kjndg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211138/original/file-20180320-31627-9kjndg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211138/original/file-20180320-31627-9kjndg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211138/original/file-20180320-31627-9kjndg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211138/original/file-20180320-31627-9kjndg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The face of indifference: Eva from Ex Machina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/mediaviewer/rm1158938368">Universal Pictures via IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps our biggest issue with artificial intelligence is the ethics of it - not whether it is ethical to build one, but whether an AI could ever be part of a human ethical environment that relies on <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12142-018-0501-y">communal concepts of moral accountability</a>. </p>
<p>Would an AI have any feelings of responsibility towards humans, regardless of how we feel about them? What is to stop an AI with sufficient access to resources from exterminating all human life because it finds it convenient to do something that will incidentally cause us harm, <a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/superintelligence-paths-dangers-strategies">as has been suggested by the philosopher Nick Bostrom?</a>. Or would it stick to fixing elections in its favour? </p>
<p>AI researchers suggest that there is <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370214001453">quite a lot that can be done</a> to stop this, not least including a hardware off-switch, and not being silly enough to give an AI autonomous control of anything particularly important.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/farewell-ursula-le-guin-the-one-who-walked-away-from-omelas-90632">Farewell Ursula Le Guin – the One who walked away from Omelas</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There are also suggestions that we could program an AI to be ethical in a human sense – and not just Asimov’s <a href="https://www.auburn.edu/%7Evestmon/robotics.html">Three Laws of Robotics</a>, whose flexibility and loop-holes were the basis of the majority of Asimov’s robot stories. </p>
<p>Regardless of how carefully we try to protect ourselves from programming an AI to “do the right thing” by us, there is always the possibility of the AI finding internal exceptions, as <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/">Gödel’s Theorem</a> implies. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/">Determinism</a>, and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computability/#SigCom">complexity theories</a> also suggest that to believe we might begin to programme such a sophisticated machine to unequivocally respond to our orders may be doomed to failure. As Stephen Hawking would remind us, failure is not an option.</p>
<h2>Alien real-estate agents</h2>
<p>Hawking’s other words of warning were on the subject of contacting aliens - the logical premise being that any aliens who could both (a) pick up our communications, and (b) pop over for a visit, would be in the possession of powers to transform space-time which are simply inconceivable to us. Our theoretical approaches to faster-than-light travel have some <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/warp.html">serious obstacles to overcome</a>. </p>
<p>Theoretical approaches include the <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/11/5/001/pdf">Alcubierre drive</a>, which requires the creation of “exotic” matter at the limits of, or beyond, our very concepts of physics. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211139/original/file-20180320-31608-1g7ty5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211139/original/file-20180320-31608-1g7ty5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211139/original/file-20180320-31608-1g7ty5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211139/original/file-20180320-31608-1g7ty5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211139/original/file-20180320-31608-1g7ty5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211139/original/file-20180320-31608-1g7ty5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211139/original/file-20180320-31608-1g7ty5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alcubierre Warp-Bubble: if we find a way to do this to space-time, we can get there faster than light.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.sfu.ca/~adebened/funstuff/warpdrive.html">A. DeBenedictis</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Again, the question of ethics arises - why would an advanced alien civilisation be interested in, or feel any responsibility towards humans? Cautionary tales abound in science fiction about the possibilities. A particularly gruesome example is The Screwfly Solution – a story by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Tiptree-Jr">James Tiptree Jr.</a> that won a <a href="https://nebulas.sfwa.org/">Nebula Award</a> in 1977. Spoiler alert: in the story, we discover that the horrific genocide committed on humanity may just be the result of some alien real-estate agents tidying up the back yard before putting the “house” on the market.</p>
<p>Science fiction writers and directors are fond of the trope of the alien menace. Director Ridley Scott has imagined the awful consequences of an AI believing an alien species is more deserving of survival than the human one, in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2316204/">Alien Covenant</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211803/original/file-20180324-54903-sjx312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211803/original/file-20180324-54903-sjx312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211803/original/file-20180324-54903-sjx312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211803/original/file-20180324-54903-sjx312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211803/original/file-20180324-54903-sjx312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211803/original/file-20180324-54903-sjx312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211803/original/file-20180324-54903-sjx312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artificial Intelligence teams up with Xenophobic Aliens in Ridley Scott’s Alien Covenant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2316204/mediaviewer/rm4061407744">Twentieth Century Fox via IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Is there any reason to believe that visiting aliens would have any more noble or less disruptive intentions than colonists reaching the Americas, or Pacific islands? Perhaps they might consider Earth a good place to send convicts, like Botany Bay in Australia. It might not bode well for the indigenous Earth people.</p>
<h2>Black holes</h2>
<p>Stephen Hawking’s most significant contributions to science have been on the nature and characteristics of black holes. These were already imagined in physics and in <a href="http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/black_holes">science fiction</a>, becoming more topical for science fiction writers towards the end of the 1960s when Hawking’s work was emerging.</p>
<p>Probably the most popular book to deal with the concept of black holes was Hawking’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168">A Brief History of Time</a>, published in 1988. Black holes had appeared in popular media before, even in a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078869/">Disney film in 1979</a>, but realism had not been a strong point. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211147/original/file-20180320-31608-1sga4c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211147/original/file-20180320-31608-1sga4c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211147/original/file-20180320-31608-1sga4c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211147/original/file-20180320-31608-1sga4c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211147/original/file-20180320-31608-1sga4c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211147/original/file-20180320-31608-1sga4c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211147/original/file-20180320-31608-1sga4c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Not-So-Realistic Disney Black Hole.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078869/mediaviewer/rm3735496960">Disney via IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Testament to the increasing knowledge and fascination with these phenomena, faults in the portrayal of the effects of the black hole <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K76z4y8q00s">Gargantua</a> in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/">Interstellar</a> – despite being <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26966-interstellars-true-black-hole-too-confusing/">well researched</a> – were considered interesting enough to the general public to be worthy of critical attention in <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2828836/Five-things-Interstellar-got-wrong-points-got-right-Space-experts-reveal-scientifically-accurate-film-actually-is.html">mass-media news reporting</a>. They also inspired a detailed explanation in <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/32/6/065001/meta">academic literature</a> of how a black hole might actually appear.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212152/original/file-20180327-109175-b4arof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212152/original/file-20180327-109175-b4arof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212152/original/file-20180327-109175-b4arof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212152/original/file-20180327-109175-b4arof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212152/original/file-20180327-109175-b4arof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212152/original/file-20180327-109175-b4arof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212152/original/file-20180327-109175-b4arof.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Progressively more realistic conceptual images of black holes - a: as portrayed in Interstellar, c: the (more) genuine article.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/32/6/065001/meta">Oliver James, Eugénie von Tunzelmann, Paul Franklin and Kip S Thorne</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Black holes have also featured in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pta-gf6JaHQ">music</a>, and are almost certainly the only celestial phenomena to have made it to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg">the top of the charts</a>.</p>
<h2>To infinity and beyond</h2>
<p>Did Hawking and other scientists discover things that had a significant influence on science fiction, or were they publicists of things that authors and specialists already knew? </p>
<p>The answer may be a bit of both - certainly the public comprehension of “grand science” has made it possible to create science fiction that is more readily comprehended, and discussed, by the non-expert. This, along with scientific progress, has changed the nature of science fiction - writers and film-makers can no longer produce “lazy” work, but can sidestep by presenting the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebmwYqoUp44">unknowable</a>, as Kubrick did at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. </p>
<p>The history of debates about and representations of artificial intelligence, aliens and even black holes pre-dates Hawking, even though he, and his contemporaries, have raised public awareness of these outside of a science fiction audience. </p>
<p>One thing is certain, however: even though science has rendered the premises of much historic science fiction obsolete, the relationship between science and science fiction is just as strong today as it has ever been.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Benjamin Menadue receives funding from the Commonwealth of Australia, in the form of a Research Training Scheme scholarship to support his PhD candidature.</span></em></p>Stephen Hawking raised the public profile of grand science, and speculated about the future of artificial intelligence, as well as contacting aliens. Does science mix easily with science fiction?Christopher Benjamin Menadue, PhD Candidate, Literature and Society, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/927702018-03-12T13:49:16Z2018-03-12T13:49:16ZStanley Kubrick’s films all had one thing in common: Jewishness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209916/original/file-20180312-30965-sxedug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jewish actor Peter Sellers in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/3941702700">James Vaughan/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Legendary director Stanley Kubrick was <a href="http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0110.html">known to have said</a> that he was not really a Jew, he just happened to have two Jewish parents. But though he may have tried to divert from this fact, Kubrick, who passed away in 1999 at the age of 70, was born and died a Jew, and Jewishness threads through and underpins all 13 of his films. </p>
<p>Kubrick was famously silent on the meaning of his movies, so their messages are open to interpretation on a number of levels. He covered many genres and topics – starting with war movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045758/">Fear and Desire in 1953</a>, and ending with marital drama in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Eyes Wide Shut (1999)</a> – and his films <a href="https://indiefilmhustle.com/stanley-kubrick/">broke new ground</a> in cinematic style.</p>
<p>But Kubrick, who is possibly the most written about film director after Alfred Hitchcock, has rarely been thought of as a Jewish director. This is because few dedicated researchers have not bothered to probe his ethnic background in any detail. </p>
<h2>Kubrick the Jewish man</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209912/original/file-20180312-30954-b38z8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209912/original/file-20180312-30954-b38z8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209912/original/file-20180312-30954-b38z8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209912/original/file-20180312-30954-b38z8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209912/original/file-20180312-30954-b38z8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209912/original/file-20180312-30954-b38z8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209912/original/file-20180312-30954-b38z8c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1014&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stanley Kubrick, aged 21, in 1949.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KubrickForLook_(cropped).jpg">Cowles Communications, Inc./Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kubrick had a history of working with Jewish actors as his leading men and women. Notably <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv5KPY5ep00">Paul Mazursky</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0877185/">Joe Turkel</a> (three times), <a href="http://time.com/9953/spartacus-life-behind-the-scenes-of-a-kubrick-classic/">Kirk Douglas</a> (twice), <a href="http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/peter-sellers/31326/the-black-and-white-genius-of-kubrick-and-sellers">Peter Sellers</a> (twice), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001859/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm">Shelley Winters</a>, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/what-to-watch/a-clockwork-orange-stanley-kubrick-controversy/">Aubrey Morris</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/jan/04/1">Miriam Karlin</a>, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/">Sydney Pollack</a>. He also worked with Jewish writers, including <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054331/">Howard Fast</a>, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2010/04/kubrick-199908">Michael Herr</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1jDvMZcrZ8">Frederic Raphael</a>, and considered adapting the work of such Jewish authors as Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig and Louis Begley. He adored the work of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/kafka-is-the-real-ghost-of-kubricks-the-shining-41853">writer Franz Kafka</a> too. But this alone is not makes him a Jewish filmmaker.</p>
<p>Although Kubrick was never a practising Jew and the Jewish references and viewpoint are not explicit or obvious in his films, once you consider his films from the standpoint of his ethnicity, as well as his cultural and intellectual milieu, then some resonant themes emerge. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209910/original/file-20180312-30975-1s48xev.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209910/original/file-20180312-30975-1s48xev.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209910/original/file-20180312-30975-1s48xev.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209910/original/file-20180312-30975-1s48xev.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209910/original/file-20180312-30975-1s48xev.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209910/original/file-20180312-30975-1s48xev.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209910/original/file-20180312-30975-1s48xev.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209910/original/file-20180312-30975-1s48xev.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kubrick with Kirk Douglas on the set of Spartacus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kubrick_-_Douglas_-_Spartacus_-_1960.JPG">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though Kubrick famously worked on a Holocaust film, <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/128033/kubricks-lost-holocaust-film">The Aryan Papers</a>, which never came to fruition, his body of work went far beyond that in terms of Jewish references.</p>
<p>His first feature, Fear and Desire (1953) is his spin on the World War II platoon movie, which typically contained a range of ethnicities and races. True to form, Kubrick cast Mazursky as the shaky (Jewish) recruit Private Sidney. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048254/">Killer’s Kiss</a> in 1955 is very much moulded in the tradition of the Jewish boxing movie – features such as <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/body_and_soul_1947/">Body and Soul (1947)</a>, directed by Robert Rossen. Kubrick’s film noir, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049406/">The Killing (1956)</a>, could well have as its tagline the Yiddish proverb, “Man plans, God laughs”. All three of these early films could also be described as existentialist, a philosophy popular with Jewish intellectuals <a href="http://pluralism.org/religions/judaism/judaism-in-america/postwar-judaism/">in the postwar era</a>, especially in Greenwich Village, New York City, where Kubrick then lived.</p>
<p>In dealing with a major incident of French military injustice during World War I, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050825/">Paths of Glory (1957)</a>, recalls the antisemitic <a href="https://www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-was-the-dreyfus-affair">Dreyfus affair</a>, a major cause célèbre of the 19th century. The epic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054331/">Spartacus (1960)</a> posits a Moses-like liberator who leads Roman slaves out of bondage while also considering such issues as <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/arthur-miller-mccarthyism/484/">McCarthyism</a>, the <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/hollywood-ten-men-who-refused-839762">Hollywood blacklist</a>, civil rights, the Holocaust and the birth of the State of Israel – all issues of Jewish concern in the 1950s. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209907/original/file-20180312-30969-1kmllkm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209907/original/file-20180312-30969-1kmllkm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209907/original/file-20180312-30969-1kmllkm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209907/original/file-20180312-30969-1kmllkm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209907/original/file-20180312-30969-1kmllkm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209907/original/file-20180312-30969-1kmllkm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209907/original/file-20180312-30969-1kmllkm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Space Odyssey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2001_A_Space_Odyssey_(1968).png">Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Robert McCall/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1964, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/almost-everything-in-dr-strangelove-was-true">Dr. Strangelove</a> conflated nuclear holocaust with the Holocaust, particularly through its titular character, the former Nazi Dr. Strangelove, at a time when the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005179">Adolf Eichmann Trial</a> was fresh in people’s memories. </p>
<p>Looking further at Kubrick’s later films, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/">2001: A Space Odyssey</a> – which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year – plays with the Hebrew Bible, Jewish liturgy, as well as Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. It is full of numerological references with the number four recurring frequently. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/">A Clockwork Orange (1971)</a> explores Judeo-Christian ideas of choice and conveys a very traditional Jewish viewpoint on the issue of free will. And <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072684/">Barry Lyndon (1975)</a> warns of the dangers of social climbing in places where you don’t belong – a traditional Jewish fear, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Shining (1980)</a> – Kubrick’s contribution to the horror genre – deals with the very biblical theme of the sacrifice of the son by the father, as found <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+22&version=ESV">in Genesis 22</a>. And <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093058/">Full Metal Jacket (1987)</a>, while ostensibly about Vietnam, is, on one level, <a href="https://forward.com/culture/film-tv/375378/was-full-metal-jacket-stanley-kubricks-stealth-holocaust-movie/">about the Holocaust</a> and man’s propensity to evil and genocide. </p>
<p>This is all capped off by Eyes Wide Shut, possibly Kubrick’s most Jewish film – given it was adapted <a href="http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/2003/Greenwich%20conference.html">from the work</a> of Jewish author Arthur Schnitzler and heavily influenced by the theories of his Jewish contemporary Sigmund Freud. It also contains the most explicitly Jewish character in any Kubrick film, Victor Ziegler (played by Sydney Pollack).</p>
<p>Kubrick’s films never offer up anything easy or obvious. He made few statements about them. But he spent a long time working on his movies. He was meticulous and paid great attention to detail. He was extremely cultured, well read, and cultivated. He certainly had views that he wanted to share but did so in the least obvious ways. He wanted to make viewers work to understand his deeper messages.</p>
<p>Kubrick’s films were not just about Jews, Jewishness and Judaism, they are far wider than any single theme. But even though the man himself tried to distract from his Jewish roots, it cannot be denied that some of this material was surely intentional.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92770/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Abrams receives funding from The British Academy. He is the author of Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual (Rutgers University Press, 2018).</span></em></p>For a man who was “not really a Jew”, Kubrick’s feature films are woven with Jewish references.Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/829112017-09-04T20:14:08Z2017-09-04T20:14:08ZGuide to the Classics: Homer’s Odyssey<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184474/original/file-20170904-17903-1b267s2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Odysseus and his crew escape the cyclops, as painted by Arnold Böcklin in 1896</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Odyssey of Homer is a Greek epic poem that tells of the return journey of Odysseus to the island of Ithaca from the war at Troy, which Homer addressed in <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">The Iliad</a>. In the Greek tradition, the war lasted for ten years. Odysseus then spent a further ten years getting home in the face of hostility from Poseidon, god of the earth and sea. </p>
<p>Odysseus’s return to his island, however, is not the end of his woes. He finds that 108 young men from the local vicinity have invaded his house to put pressure on his wife Penelope to marry one of them. A stalemate exists, and it is only resolved by a bow contest at the end of the poem, which then leads to a slaughter of all the suitors by Odysseus and his son Telemachus. Peace on the island is eventually restored through the intervention of Athena, goddess of wisdom, victory and war.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184476/original/file-20170904-17971-1o7zvvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184476/original/file-20170904-17971-1o7zvvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184476/original/file-20170904-17971-1o7zvvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184476/original/file-20170904-17971-1o7zvvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184476/original/file-20170904-17971-1o7zvvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184476/original/file-20170904-17971-1o7zvvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1389&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184476/original/file-20170904-17971-1o7zvvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184476/original/file-20170904-17971-1o7zvvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1389&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Penelope, waiting on Ithaca. Painted by Domenico Beccafumi circa 1514.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The quest of Odysseus to get back to his island and eject the suitors is built on the power of his love for home and family. This notion of love conquering fear and hatred is a common theme in Greek quest mythology. </p>
<p>The Odyssey, like the Iliad, is divided into 24 books, corresponding to the 24 letters in the Greek alphabet. Within the middle section of the poem (Books 9-12), Odysseus describes all the challenges that he has faced trying to get home. These include monsters of various sorts, a visit to the afterlife, cannibals, drugs, alluring women, and the hostility of Poseidon himself. These challenges resemble those of earlier heroes like Heracles and Jason. In <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">the Iliad</a>, the hero Achilles faces no such challenges, indicating that the Odyssey has a very different idea of heroism. </p>
<h2>Cunning and courage</h2>
<p>The critical episode on the way home is Odysseus’s encounter with Polyphemus, a Cyclops and son of Poseidon (told in Book 9). He and his men enter into the cave of the Cyclops, get him drunk on some seriously potent wine, and then stick a large burning stake into his eye. Polyphemus is blinded but survives the attack and curses the voyage home of the Ithacans. All of Odysseus’s men are eventually killed, and he alone survives his return home, mostly because of his versatility and cleverness. There is a strong element of the trickster figure about Homer’s Odysseus.</p>
<p>It is very important in the Odyssey that the hero’s renown as the destroyer of Troy has quickly entered into the oral tradition of the world through which he travels. On the last leg of his return he is entertained by the Phaeacians on the island of Scheria (perhaps modern Corfu), where Odysseus, his identity unknown to his hosts, rather cheekily asks the local bard Demodocus to sing the story of the wooden horse, which Odysseus had used to hide the Greek soldiers and surprise the city of Troy. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184478/original/file-20170904-17903-11yny2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184478/original/file-20170904-17903-11yny2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184478/original/file-20170904-17903-11yny2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184478/original/file-20170904-17903-11yny2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184478/original/file-20170904-17903-11yny2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184478/original/file-20170904-17903-11yny2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184478/original/file-20170904-17903-11yny2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Odysseus resists the Sirens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/carolemage/13718823364">Carole Raddato/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Odysseus is more than keen to hear about his own heroic exploits. And so well does Demodocus sing the story of the horse that tears run down Odysseus’s cheeks and he groans heavily. His reaction to the bard prompts his host, the king Alcinous, to ask him who he is and what is his story? </p>
<p>Odysseus can rightly claim to be the conqueror of Troy based on his creative thinking in dreaming up the idea of the horse in the first place, not to mention his courage in going into its belly with the other men. His role in breaking the siege at Troy is a precursor to breaking the stalemate in his own house. He is a kind of “breaker of sieges” in early Greek epic. His heroism is characterised by these two elements – his cunning intelligence, and his courage in the darkness of confined spaces. </p>
<p>This kind of heroism is very different from Achilles in the Iliad, whose renown is built on his use of the spear and shield in single combat in the bright light of day. Achilles never sees the fall of Troy because he dies beforehand (unless one watches the 2004 film Troy). One might say that Achilles wins his Trojan war by killing Hector, with Athena’s support, but it is Odysseus who is the real destroyer of the city by virtue of a new and different kind of heroism.</p>
<p>Just as Odysseus is too clever for the Trojans - and the suitors - so his wife Penelope is a model of cleverness and circumspection. She tries to avoid re-marriage and delays the event by a clever ruse: she agrees to marry a suitor only after she has finished weaving a death shroud for Odysseus’s father Laertes. The suitors agree to this, but little do they know that she weaves the shroud by day, and un-weaves it by night. She is eventually betrayed by one of the maids in the house, and forced by the suitors to complete it, although the ruse does last for three years.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184477/original/file-20170904-17926-1m6frkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184477/original/file-20170904-17926-1m6frkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184477/original/file-20170904-17926-1m6frkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184477/original/file-20170904-17926-1m6frkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184477/original/file-20170904-17926-1m6frkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184477/original/file-20170904-17926-1m6frkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184477/original/file-20170904-17926-1m6frkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184477/original/file-20170904-17926-1m6frkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Penelope keeps her suitors at bay by spinning a shroud for three years. Painted by Pinturicchio circa 1500.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Greeks had no illusion that the characteristic cleverness of Odysseus had a sinister aspect to it, not the least in the way that he deals with the Trojans after the war. Some of the atrocities at Troy, notably the killing of the young boy Astyanax (son of Hector and Andromache), are sheeted home to Odysseus by the poets. In late-5th century BC Athens (over 200 years after Homer’s Odyssey) the rise of demagogic politicians, like Cleon, seems to have affected the portrayal of Odysseus in Greek drama. In works such as Sophocles’ Philoctetes and Euripides’ Trojan Women the focus is on his appalling cruelty and duplicity. Likewise, the Roman poet Vergil in his Aeneid (Book 2) emphasises the dark trickery of Ulysses (the Roman name for Odysseus) in getting the Trojans to drag the Wooden Horse inside the city walls.</p>
<h2>Returning from war</h2>
<p>The Odyssey, therefore, is a maritime epic right up to the point where the focus of attention is the siege in Odysseus’s house. The return journey of the warrior from Troy was a favourite theme in Greek mythology, and we know of another early epic poem (simply called Nostoi, meaning “Returns”) which told a similar story. Even within the Odyssey there is a significant contrast between the careful and clever return of Odysseus, and that of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, who is murdered as soon as he gets home.</p>
<p>There are a number of signs that the Odyssey is a later poem than the Iliad, and not necessarily by the same poet (despite the Greek tradition that they are both by “Homer”). The gods are far less prominent in the Odyssey than the Iliad, although Athena in particular has her moments. She is associated with cleverness (metis in Greek) and victory (nike), both of which are germane to the story of Odysseus’ survival, and that of his family. In many ways Odysseus and Penelope are models of the sorts of things that Athena represents.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184480/original/file-20170904-17971-1wa3wb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184480/original/file-20170904-17971-1wa3wb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184480/original/file-20170904-17971-1wa3wb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184480/original/file-20170904-17971-1wa3wb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184480/original/file-20170904-17971-1wa3wb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184480/original/file-20170904-17971-1wa3wb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184480/original/file-20170904-17971-1wa3wb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184480/original/file-20170904-17971-1wa3wb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Odysseus and his son slaughter Penelope’s suitors on Ithaca.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Odyssey also has a more elaborate structure and chronology than the Iliad. The first four books deal with the situation of the house invasion on Ithaca, and the travels of the young Telemachus to mainland Greece. Athena takes Telemachus from the female space of the house to the outside world of male politics. Thereafter, Odysseus himself is the centre of the poem’s attention as wanderer, tale teller, and siege breaker in his own home. The folktale world through which he travels (in Books 9 to 12) is told indirectly by Odysseus on his journey home to a Phaeacian audience, rather than directly by the poet. This notion of Odysseus as tale teller is central to the Odyssey.</p>
<p>In many ways the Odyssey is the most renowned literary work from Greek antiquity, even though some people would say it lacks the radical brilliance of the Iliad. The fact that the word “odyssey” has come into our language from Homer’s poem speaks for itself. The story of the Odyssey is a quintessential quest that relates to the passage through life and the importance of love and family and home. Many readers today find the Odyssey more accessible and more “modern” than the “archaic” Iliad.</p>
<h2>Modern interpretations</h2>
<p>The rich variety of mythical narratives in the Odyssey (especially his wanderings through a world of wonder and mystery in Books 9 to 12) has meant that the cultural history of the poem is astonishingly large, whether in literature or art or film. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2803160-the-return-of-ulysses">Whole monographs</a> have been written on the reception of Odysseus in later periods. When one bears in mind that Odysseus’s name at Rome, Ulysses, is often used by artists and writers, as it was by <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-wonder-of-joyces-ulysses-79417">James Joyce</a>, then we get a sense of how dominant a figure he is in western cultural history.</p>
<p>Creative re-tellings of the Odyssey in a modern context include films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/">2001: A Space Odyssey</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087884/">Paris, Texas</a>, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190590/">O Brother Where Art Thou?</a> Likewise the theme of the returning war veteran has Homeric overtones in films like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056218/">The Manchurian Candidate</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077416/">The Deer Hunter</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478134/">In the Valley of Elah</a>. </p>
<p>Odysseus, moreover, probably influenced the early comic book superhero Batman in the late 1930s and 40s, just as Greek demigods, such as Heracles and Achilles, help to inform the extra-terrestrial background of Superman. As a human bat, Batman uses disguise to good effect, as Odysseus does, and he thrives on conducting his challenges <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/27325001?q&versionId=44717131">in the darkness of night</a>. </p>
<p>But the last word on the subject of Odysseus and his adventures should go to Bob Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Dylan <a href="https:%20www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2016/dylan-lecture.html">wrote a lecture in honour of his Nobel victory</a>, focused on some of the literature that influenced and affected him. One such work was the Odyssey, and with echoes of Constantine Cavafy’s magnificent poem <a href="http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=74&cat=1">Ithaca</a>, Dylan reflects on Odysseus’ adventures and their immediacy as a lived experience:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In a lot of ways, some of these same things have happened to you. You too have had drugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman. You too have been spellbound by magical voices, sweet voices with strange melodies. You too have come so far and have been so far blown back. And you’ve had close calls as well. You have angered people you should not have. And you too have rambled this country all around. And you’ve also felt that ill wind, the one that blows you no good. And that’s still not all of it. </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>Suggested translation: The Odyssey of Homer, Richmond Lattimore.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Mackie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The story of the Odyssey is a quintessential quest that relates to the passage through life and the importance of love, family and home. Odysseus’s adventures have influenced everyone from Batman to Bob Dylan.Chris Mackie, Professor of Classics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/655682016-10-07T06:56:18Z2016-10-07T06:56:18ZTo boldly go toward new frontiers, we first need to learn from our colonial past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140834/original/image-20161007-32698-8dgk2y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The idea that there's a moral imperative for humans to expand beyond Earth is echoed by influential proponents of space exploration. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tamaracraiu/4504728673/">Tamara Craiu/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How should we understand the idea of the frontier in the contemporary world, with spacecraft sailing <a href="http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/">beyond the solar system</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing">quantum computing</a> taking us deeper into the heart of matter?</p>
<p>Many view human evolution as a continual expansion into new territories, from out-of-Africa to the “high frontier” of space. Frontiers, then, are associated with exploration, conquest, and struggles against hostile nature. </p>
<p>They can be seen as a challenge to solve with technology, going hand-in-hand with human progress. But the concept also comes with a lot of baggage. </p>
<h2>From stone age to space age?</h2>
<p>Once upon a time, the story goes, the world was full of space for humans to expand into. The genus <em>Homo</em> radiated <a href="http://phys.org/news/2016-09-human-dna-tied-exodus-africa.html">out from temperate Africa</a>, colonising the tundras of Ice Age Europe, and the continents and islands of Asia and Australasia. </p>
<p>As the climate warmed from 12,000 years ago, populations increased and people with domesticated animals and crops expanded further, turning <a href="https://news.virginia.edu/content/agricultural-methods-early-civilizations-may-have-altered-global-climate-study-suggests">forests into fields</a> along the way.</p>
<p>On one side of the frontier was tame “culture”; on the other wild “nature”. Humans proved tremendously successful at adapting to these new environments using technologies such as fire, stone tools and metallurgy. </p>
<p>By the 20th century, technology had enabled humans to move beyond the narrow band of pressure and temperature where our bodies had evolved, to explore the deep sea, the Earth’s poles, and outer space. Special suits and vehicles enabled travel to these remote places where life at the extremes promised revelations about our place in the universe.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QSxI0OOjR0Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>This story is captured well in a famous scene from the 1968 film <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/">2001: A Space Odyssey</a></em> in which a bone tool, flung into the sky by an ancestral being, is transformed into an Earth-orbiting spacecraft. </p>
<h2>The other side of the frontier</h2>
<p>What’s often left out of this popular narrative is the perspective of those on the other side of the frontier. Consider colonial expansion from the 15th century onwards, when European nations sent ships to the southern hemisphere in search of new resources. </p>
<p>European invaders painted Indigenous people as Stone Age “savages” and cast themselves as the pinnacle of human evolution, entitled to lay claim to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_incognita">terra incognita</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius">terra nullius</a>. </p>
<p>The conquest of frontiers in the American West, the Australian outback, South America and numerous other places, was often brutal and bloody. The expanding front didn’t bring “civilisation” to supposedly benighted people; the result was rather <a href="http://www.australianstogether.org.au/stories/detail/colonisation">genocide, disease, environmental degradation, alienation and poverty</a>.</p>
<p>Utopia did not lie waiting in the New World. </p>
<p>Yet, despite the weight of historical evidence, people continue to assume that new frontiers beyond the Earth can <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-space-travel-will-save-mankind-and-we-should-colonise-other-planets-10058811.html">provide refuge</a> from old injustices perpetuated on this planet.</p>
<h2>Panspermia and the moral imperative</h2>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia">Panspermia</a> is the theory that the universe is filled with life. Micro-organisms and pre-biotic molecules travel on comets and asteroids between the worlds, flourishing when and where conditions are right.</p>
<p>The expansion of life into every available niche is thought to be a natural process that’s taken place countless times in this, and other, galaxies. The corollary of this idea is that enabling the spread of human life throughout the universe is justified.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140833/original/image-20161007-32718-1sndeuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The trappings of status in the ‘real’ world are just a matter of coding in the virtual one.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/andreasstawinski/15568818582/">Cyber-Andi/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To date, evidence that micro-organisms can survive journeys in space, even if encased in meteoroids, is scant. Critics also point out that the theory merely delays the real question, which is how life started. </p>
<p>While the panspermia theory is controversial, the idea that there’s a moral imperative for humans to expand beyond Earth is echoed by <a href="http://www.spacequotes.com/">influential proponents</a> of space exploration. </p>
<p>Consider <a>these thoughts</a>) from American science fiction writer <a href="http://www.raybradbury.com/">Ray Bradbury</a>, from his 1971 conversation with <a href="http://www.carlsagan.com/">Carl Sagan</a>, and <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/arthur-c-clarke-9249620">Arthur C. Clarke</a>, on the eve of NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft entering orbit around Mars:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What’s the use of looking at Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn’t to guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And here’s space-travel advocate, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Savage">Marshall Savage</a> in his 1992 book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1965968.The_Millennial_Project?from_search=true">The Millennial Project: Colonising the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We need to rupture the barriers that confine us to the land mass of a single planet. By breaking out, we can assure our survival and the continuation of Life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such views are increasingly attracting trenchant criticism, as scholars “<a href="https://theconversation.com/want-to-understand-the-decolonisation-debate-heres-your-reading-list-51279">decolonise</a>” knowledge and expose how the simple narrative of frontier expansion obscures the cause of terrestrial inequalities.</p>
<h2>Islands of the interior</h2>
<p>Perhaps the frontiers to be conquered in the 21st century are not spatial, but virtual. </p>
<p>Rapid advances in computing technology and data storage have renewed speculation about the idea, so often described in science fiction, of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35786771">uploading personalities</a> into a digital environment. Here worlds can be tailored to suit individual or collective taste without environmental impact. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139213/original/image-20160926-31862-7iavo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tsiolkovsky imagined that the free energy of the sun would meet all human requirements for warmth and sustenance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Russian Academy of Science</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1890s, Russian space pioneer <a href="http://www.mapcon.com/konstantin-tsiolkovsky-role-in-rocket-science">Konstantin Tsiolkovsky</a> hypothesised that living in microgravity (when people and objects appear to be weightless) would eliminate social disparities. Basking in the full energy of the sun, with no need for houses or furniture, everyone would be equal. </p>
<p>While this vision has not been realised, digital habitats seem to offer similar potential. The trappings of status in the “real” world, with all their attendant costs, need only be imagined to come into being; a new body or an elaborate castle are just a matter of coding.</p>
<p>But our experience with cyberspace to date suggests that class, race and gender <a href="http://culturalpolitics.net/digital_cultures/global">still structure access to resources</a>. The impacts of colonialism have contributed to a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide">digital divide</a>” that mirrors the old geopolitical frontiers.</p>
<p>Virtual communities can also be places where the worst of human behaviour is nurtured. Some argue that this is because people don’t yet perceive the online environment as “real”. Hence they think the social consequences of their aggression cannot be real. </p>
<p>How, then, do we define reality when human interactions and material culture become numbers stored in machines?</p>
<p>It may be that the ultimate frontiers of the future will be boundaries between different levels of engagement with the material world. The “haves” may withdraw into quantum computers, rather than colonising other planets, and leave the “have-nots” to tackle the global unpredictability of the <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/what-anthropocene-epoch-humans-climate-change-have-brought-new-geological-era-experts-2408732">Anthropocene</a> era.</p>
<h2>A thirst for the new</h2>
<p>If crossing frontiers consistently fails to deliver utopia and instead replicates terrestrial inequalities, is there any cause for optimism?</p>
<p>People on Earth avidly follow the discovery of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-you-find-exoplanets-24153">expolanets</a> (a planet that orbits a star outside our solar system). Witness the frenzy that accompanied the announcement of the <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/new-planet-found-which-humans-could-colonise-10550245">potentially-habitable Proxima b</a> in August. </p>
<p>The live exploration of inaccessible ocean landscapes through remote cameras, like those of the <a href="http://www.noaa.gov/">US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s</a> research vessel <a href="http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/explorations.html">Okeanos Explorer</a>, is equally compelling.</p>
<p>Humans, it seems, have a thirst for escape. We hope that elsewhere – wherever that is – things may be better. </p>
<p>But this particular version of elsewhere has proved to be elusive. In the end, frontiers are not crisp lines on maps, but complex historical processes. As legendary explorer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freya_Stark">Freya Stark</a> (1893-1993) said, “every frontier is doomed to produce an opposition beyond it”. </p>
<p>This, then, is our mission: to reconcile the opposites on the near side, before boldly going further into the beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65568/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Gorman is a member of the Space Industry Association of Australia and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.</span></em></p>Technology had enabled humans to explore the deep sea, the Earth’s poles, and outer space. But we shouldn’t forget historical lessons about frontiers in the process of traversing them.Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in archaeology and space studies, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.