Happy Birthday Hal 9000!
January 12th, 2005
Yup, everyone’s favourite, not to mention misunderstood, computer is 8 today. He’s memorable for such quotes like the following:
“I am a HAL Nine Thousand computer, Production Number 3. I became operational at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois on January 12, 1997.”
“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”
“I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid.”
Poor chap was driven to paranoia over a programming conflict. He was designed to confer clearly and without withholding any information. But of course, as written in legend, he was told to keep the mission’s true objective a secret and subsequently killed everyone onboard the Discovery apart from David Bowman, who was reborn as a Child of the Stars.
Truly sentient beings must all be on the brink of madness. Hal realised this. You are probably reading this in your room, where up is up and down is down, and knocking something off your desk will cause it to fall. Well think outside your room. Outside your house, past the sky, peer into the infinite darkness of the vacuum of space. You can see the sun burning; its life striking out to the planets. Spinning past Pluto close to the speed of life. Leaving the Milky Way, out until the galaxies look as small stars hanging in the night’s sky. Expanding and collapsing infinite times, past the universe. Out into the ever increasing void of space. Never slowing, never reaching the destination that doesn’t exist. Then back, instantaneously. Slowly orbiting the Earth that is caught in the sun’s fatal grasp. Nothing keeping the extremities hanging in space, no up, no down. Nothingness for the first time touches mind; and it cannot comprehend.