Of course there was television (though color only arrived in the UK in 1968, and I’d only seen black and white). (Being something of a committed tool user, I myself was routinely using a typewriter even in 1968, though I didn’t know any other kids who were-and my hands at the time weren’t big or strong enough to do much other than type fast with one finger, a skill whose utility returned decades later with the advent of smartphones.) But in those days, very few people could type, and there probably didn’t seem to be any reason to think that would change. Of course, there were keyboards for computers back in the 1960s. There also aren’t any keyboards to be seen (and in the high-tech spacecraft full of computers going to Jupiter, the astronauts are writing with pens on clipboards presciently, no slide rules and no tape are shown-though there is one moment when a printout that looks awfully like a punched card is produced). (Both had actually been invented a few years before the movie was made, but neither was widely known.)

And, yes, in the movie there weren’t any touchscreens-or mice. To be fair, cockpits today still have plenty of buttons-but the centerpiece is now a display. But otherwise, it’s lots and lots of mechanical buttons. In the movie, though, one obvious difference is that there’s one physical display per functional area the notion of windows, or dynamically changeable display areas, hadn’t arisen yet.Īnother difference is in how the computers are controlled. So what about the computers in the movie? Well, they have lots of flat-screen displays, just like real computers today.

But like many other things in the movie, it doesn’t feel like what was predicted was off track it’s just that-50 years later-we still haven’t got there yet. One very obvious prediction of 2001 that hasn’t panned out, at least yet, is routine, luxurious space travel. But just when I was getting concerned, there was a bone thrown in the air that morphed into a spacecraft, and pretty soon there was a rousing waltz-and a big space station turning majestically on the screen. I was confused, and frankly a little bored. But then what was going on? Those weren’t space scenes. It started with an impressive extraterrestrial sunrise. And to this day, I remember sitting in a plush seat and eagerly waiting for the curtain to go up, and the movie to begin. I’d been dropped off for a matinee, and was pretty much the only person in the theater. So in the early summer of 1968 there I was, the first time I’d ever been in an actual cinema (yes, it was called that in the UK).

Then on Ap(May 15 in the UK), the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was released-and I was keen to see it. And I was eagerly studying everything I could to do with space. For the first time, a space probe had recently landed on another planet (Venus).

Prototype 3 lost odyssey