CREATED BY: Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke
FIRST APPEARANCE: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
AREAS OF INFLUENCE: HAL 9000 starts out as a miraculous technology—a computer with artificial intelligence beyond anything we’ve seen, even today—but quickly turns into something we fear rather than dream of. By the time HAL refuses to open the pod bay doors, he’s come to embody every nightmare about the influence of technology on human life. It’s a fear we still grapple with today and one we’ll continue to face as we get closer and closer to the possibility that HAL will no longer be a fiction. Plus, he’s pretty quotable.
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