2001 A Space Odyssey

Matthew Deinlein
Theresa Evans
English 103
December 3, 2009


Imagination Captured
A film evaluation of 2001 A Space Odyssey

Anyone who does not like 2001 A Space Odyssey does not have a firm grasp on his or her imagination. This 1968 film is a very modern look at the future from a 60’s perspective. It incorporates ideas such as artificial intelligence, extra-terrestrial life, and other future ideas and technologies.
This movie was like hugging a relative that you rarely see. It starts off interestingly with excitement, anxiety, and prefigures. This anticipation gradually becomes awkward until it resolves into the relaxation of the release representing a downward motion from the climax. Its concept of the discovery of tools was very feasible and was presented in a realistic manner. Our genetically close relatives coming upon an animal’s skeleton and curiously playing with the bones. They discover through this playful curiosity that these bones are not limited to recreational use and can be used as tools, or later, as weapons.
This movie introduces the idea of technological dominance translating to dominance over the individual. We see this in the first scene when the Ape like creature uses the bone, the pinnacle of technology at that time period, as a weapon. This technology is creating dominance over the rest of the species and thus creating an atmosphere where they are able to protect what they need and more. Technological dominance is also expressed later in this film when HAL 9000 eliminates four out of the five crewmembers.
Technology has always been the focal point that measures the success of our species. In this 1968 film, they masterfully depict predicted outcomes to our dependence on technology. Inevitably if we program computers to “learn” and have pseudo emotions, we are more susceptible to being influenced by them. We are inevitably unintelligent as a community and incapable of maintaining our own leadership among all nations.
Extraterrestrial life has been on the forefront of human thought since the dawn of man. The unavoidable, and inescapable question that many humans have tried to answer scientifically. This life is represented in a perfect rectangular prism that is black. Interestingly they chose the color black, a color that absorbs all other light and emits none itself. A series of colored rectangular prisms controlled by outside sources that were intelligent beings.
The only thing that this movie can offer us is perspective. In the culture of the late 60’s they produce this movie that depicts their perception of the future, intelligent life, future technologies, places of work, and planets that have been visited. The technologies in this movie are 40 years or more ahead of their proper time in our existence as humans. Some of these technologies we today take for granted but in the era of this production, they were only dreams on a storyboard. Such dreams as video messaging, flights into outer space by average citizens, and artificial intelligence are presented for the very first time.
This movie pushed the envelope of musical perfection, unique filming techniques, and was the founder of many of today’s science fiction techniques. This movie sparked imagination, inspired creative inquiry into unanswered questions of human existence and provided us with a glimpse of the future and what is to be expected in the future of the year 2001. It was one of the first movies to use weightlessness in space and other unique accuracies of space. This movie is definable as an artistic marvel then and now, and is still pushing the envelope of imagination creativity and the minds boundary of it’s own perspective. It reaches out beyond our own personal perspective to give this timeless classic.

Thanks for reading, I'm looking for inspiration for another paragraph, so don't be afraid to share your ideas.

Thanks

The Project

We all got together yesterday to finish up the project. We collected the results from surveymonkey and created a graph that we put on the "Why Do People Use Facebook" page. The graph is hard to read so we are still working on that. Lorna took the pictures that are going on our site. I would say we are 98% complete as of now. We just have the chart to fix, and the pictures to put on our website and then we are finished. We worked alone on individual pages and then we got together as a group to put it all together and change what didn't fit in.

Reading Strategy

I hate reading and working at the same time. When I'm reading I usually don't enjoy having to go back and search for which character left in the first chapter or figure out what some complex sentence says. This is because I don't use a reading strategy, I read everything at 100 words a minute and don't retain anything whether it's a 300 page book on worm holes or a 2 paragraph article on cows.

You have to look at their writing strategy in order to develop your reading strategy. Look for key things such as repetition, target audience, and purpose of article. You can also read the first and last paragraph to figure out what it's about. I usually read all of the main article then go back and read the beginning summary for clarification.

Good luck!

Sex

Analitical reading is very important, you need to know what is being said and whats being said is never on the surface. You have to take many things into account but one of the major things you need to look at is the angle. The angle is the target audience and how the information is presented to this target audience to convey a certain idea or view. I understand that this is very confusing and doesn't really make sense, so I'm going to explain it like this.

Analitical reading is like talking to members of the opposite sex, when you say something there are always millions of ways that it could be taken. You have to be careful how you interpret what is said correctly and then respond to it cautiously so your nobody gets the wrong idea. Take this title for example, you were interested in reading this blog because you saw the title and it drew you to it, even though it has nothing to do with the point of this blog.

Just Write It!

When your writing a story you worry more about getting that A then telling the story. You spend your entire time writing going back and checking spelling and making sure you have the right punctuation and everything is grammatically correct. These are all important things, but it's not what writing is about. I find it best to just go through and get everything written then go back a day or two later and see if it's what your trying to say and that it is presented how you wish for it to be presented. I also find that the most important part of proof reading is having someone else look at it. You know what you meant to say and so that's how you read it, they don't and can often give you crazy good insight!

Rhetoric Situations

I find that I am often misunderstood or don't dictate the full meaning of what is being said because of how I say it and the power of the words I use. So it is important to know what you are saying and what it's other meetings are. This is why we study the uses and impressions of speech and also written works. This study allows us to classify what we read into genres that allow us to access information or categories of reading that interest us.

Me talking

If you really want to read this after that title... I'm sry? This is just a test, so hopefully it works! TTYL