Because of the overwhelming response to last night's blog, here is another. You can comment on this one until midnight tonight (January 16).Respond, as in the previous blog, to day 3's "Consider" question. Can you come up with some possible explanations for HAL's actions? Try to consider the details of the HAL plot very carefully, as they all add to the issue. (Recall his conversation with Dave, the function of the AE-35 unit, etc.)
5 comments:
Frank and Dave secretly go into the space pod to discuss some cautious plans that they do not want HAL to know. HAL, knowing how to read lips, knew that Dave and Frank were planning on disconnecting it and doing things on their own. Although it is daring and extremely unheard of, they decide that it is best for them to do so. Even though people could not tell if HAL had true feelings or not, it is shown through HAL’s actions that this computer does have genuine feelings. HAL feels betrayed and angry that his “friends” would go behind his back to disconnect him. As a result of this anger, he rapidly starts to betray them too. Killing Frank and the other men in hibernation, as well as, locking Dave out is not a typical action for these genius computers to make. I also think that HAL tries to kill everyone in order to terminate this mission. From the beginning, HAL feels uneasy and worried about the maximum security that they have put in order to carry out this mission. It might have been HAL’s nervousness that caused him to act differently and try to end this mission.
The main reason for HAL’s action is the fact that HAL had a logic area of its brain or motherboard, and was able to philosophically debate whether or not to attempt to rid of his own crew members. HAL probably thought to himself, if I let them back in the ship, I will not be running again because they will disable me. The computer merely saw this as a threat to its own existence and created a new plan for itself in able to keep the mission success in top priority. He killed the humans in the sleeping tube due to the fact that he had completely lost trust for humans, if the computer was able to trust in the first place, and no longer saw need for any human life forms aboard. An easier way to explain this unexplained change would be to say that the computer really was malfunctioning and just starting going haywire. Every computer will crash eventually unless kept under constant service, and repair. Another thing is that every computer, no matter how much digital memory, will always need to restart eventually. All of these explanations could have very easily been the reason for HAL’s irrational actions.
After watching the third day of the movie, it reminded me of the movie irobot. In irobot, the basic theme was that the computer named "vicky" controlled all systems of the robots and the company. The computer decided to change all robots to destroy people and the society. This is similar to 2001, where HAL kills the men in hibernation as well as Frank. The computer in 2001 is angry that Frank and Dave had plans to kill it, therefore, it tries to get revenge on them. HAL wants to take part in this mission, and refuses for anyone to get in the way of it. As a result, it acts accordingly because it wants to take over the mission.
HAL’s actions seem to bring up the question that the reporter asked on the second day, “Does HAL have emotions?” It seems that HAL’s dislodging of Frank’s pod and refusal to allow Dave back into the mother ship reflected a basic human mechanism, self-preservation. HAL finds out what Dave and Frank might do to him after fixing the AE-35. In order to protect himself, he does the only thing he could, kill the crew. The question is why does he kill the hibernating members as well? I think it was just so that would be another responsibility that HAL would need to cater to. Killing the crew means that there is no human factor on the ship anymore, reflecting another human characteristic HAL has. He wants the glory of being able to have gone to Jupiter, alone.
On the other hand, this might also reflect HAL’s machinery. Maybe the mission to Jupiter was so important that HAL could not jeopardize his own well-being for that of the crew. I think this isn’t self-preservation, it is programming. If that were the case, I believe HAL was programmed into a triage mechanism where all he had to do was protect himself. That would explain why he killed the hibernating crew members, because that way he could focus his energy on personal life conservation.
fin.
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