Jacob Stoudt
10-14-15
American Studies 100
First Paper
2001: A Space Odyssey Directed by Stanley Kubrick and The Blog at the End of the
World by Paul Tremblay, these two stories are great examples of showing how technology was
viewed in their respective time periods. 2001 was a movie released in 1968, and The Blog at the
End of the World was a writing done in 2008. The sheer time difference between these two
publications are the reason for me writing this paper today. I will be discussing both of these
works in detail as well as comparing the time periods both publications were made in.
2001: A Space Odyssey, is a legendary film amongst cyberpunk writers and enthusiasts.
First before I dive too far into this, cyberpunk is an idea about what the future is going to be like
and the technology that comes next. Anyway, this movie is about people being sent into space
because a mysterious object was found. The astronauts are accompanied by the ships super
computer, H.A.L. Hal is a computer that is based off of artificial intelligence. He basically
controls the entire ship. Specific details about the movie that are worth noting are Hal’s eye. His
eye is deep red and lifeless and follows the astronauts wherever they go. Another is the absence
of sound in parts of the movie. Sometimes all you can hear is the breathing of the astronauts.
H.A.L also kills all the astronauts on board after he uncovers their plot to unplug him. These
facts make this movie legendary and quite popular in its own right.
The Blog at the End of the World, is a recent work done in the cyberpunk field of writing.
The story is as the title says, the world has basically ended and this woman manages to keep a
blog going. A question worth asking is that if the world has ended why is the internet still
running but I will leave that up to you to answer. The story is simply a bunch of blog posts that
consist of people talking about tragedy and death, and what is causing the end of the world. The
participants of the blog think that it’s an outburst of brain aneurisms within the human
population that’s killing people. With all of this going on around them the participants are still
going about their daily lives.
These two publications are basically polar opposites. During the late 60’s and 70’s when
2001 was released people were almost oblivious to computing technology in general. “MITS
announced its “Altair” kit on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Mechanics (Ceruzzi
105).” The Altair was basically the first marketed in home computer. Technology like an in
home computer was legendary for the time, now imagine the possibility of a supercomputer with
artificial intelligence. The idea of that kind of technology must have been amazing at the time.
Also during this time on a worldwide level, the cold war was going on so technology was a key.
On the flip side with The Blog at the End of the World, technology is an everyday occurrence.
With the existence of smartphones, laptops, social media, the internet was and still is a staple of
life. Very rarely even in 2008 was someone not using a cell phone or laptop on a daily basis.
This was the opposite of the 60’s and 70’s when technology was barely prevalent. Also the
question I raised earlier in the paper shows just how important the internet and technology is.
Even though the world was ending people still kept the internet going, enough said.
These two publications show the differences in technology and times that they were
respectively produced. These two products were very fun and interesting to write about.
Bibliography:
1. Ceruzzi, Paul. "The Microprocessor." In Computing: A Concise History, 105. MIT Press.