2001: Not Exactly
Kubrick's 'Odyssey'
''Well, that's what the map says -- see, right here between 2000 and 2002.''
''I guess this is it, then. But it doesn't look anything like that brochure Mr. Kubrick showed us in 1968.''
Yep, it looks like Stanley Kubrick really flim-flammed us with 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Along with our Jan. 1 hangovers Monday morning, we woke up in a 2001 that just isn't what Stan promised us more than 30 years ago. Lord, Pan Am isn't even flying anymore, much less shuttling us to the moon and back.
Here on Earth, we're still driving plain old cars that stay on the ground, on wheels, and ooze along at subsonic speeds, if you don't count certain stretches of the Gulf Freeway. No meals-in-a-pill; we still have to cook and chew our food -- although now we can Egg-Wave our breakfast instead of messing up a skillet.
Your average dentist is still armed with the same medieval tools of torture he was 30 years ago, and the last flu shot I took still came from a needle, not a nose spray.
Which is not to say there haven't been a few advances along the way.
One Kubrickian prediction that has come to pass -- we do have an electronic gizmo to handle just about every task we do. Pocket calculators, home computers, digital watches, microwave ovens, VCRs, cell phones -- things that were pure science-fiction 30 years ago are inextricably entwined in our lives. ''Electronic servants,'' the soothsayers of yore rosily predicted.
But one wonders just who the servant really is.
I enter into the record a couple of random examples:
-- A very few years ago, if I arrived home after a violent thunderstorm, my first and only job would be to find out where my dog had hidden himself away from the lightning and thunder, and hold him under my coat until he stopped quivering.
Now, though, I have a whole houseful of electronic marvels to comfort. The microwave and VCR are frantic, shouting, ''12:00! ... 12:00! ... 12:00!'' at the tops of their lungs. The answering machine sobs ''ERROR ... ERROR .. ERROR.'' And the TV is just plain catatonic, sitting there HISSSSSSSSSSSSSing until someone at Cable Central can give it a good smack upside the head.
Only my good, old-fashioned wind-up ship's bell clock keeps its head; at 10:30 it harrumphs and says ''ding-ding, ding-ding, ding!'' which is ship's bell clock talk for ''What's all this fuss over a little storm?''
-- When the 1877-vintage tall ship Elissa makes her yearly day sails in the spring, she takes with her a number of specially invited guests, who you'd think would relish the opportunity to get away from the rat race to spend a day sailing the bounding main under a billowing cloud of canvas.
But, no, in 2001, you can stick your beeper and your cell phone in your sea bag (even though you are expressly asked not to), and bring the rat race right onto the high seas with you.
One crewmember reported that when she ducked into the fo'c'sle to fetch a climbing belt, she found no less than four people sitting on the bunks chattering away on their phones.
Another crewmember was himself in the middle of making a business deal via the airwaves, when the captain unexpectedly cried out, ''All hands make ready to come about!''
Our crewman, duty-minded as always, put his business call on hold and took his sail station.
When he got back to the call, the customer told him thanks, but while he was away they'd decided to give the job to someone else -- earning my hapless shipmate the unfortunate distinction of being the first businessman ever to lose a job because he had to tack a square-rigger.
It's a little scary. All these electronic servants were supposed to free us from the daily drudgery of the workplace and give us more leisure time -- when in fact, they are insinuating themselves more and more into out former ''down-time,'' as we spend our evenings answering the day's e-mail, our suppertimes fending off computer-synthesizedtelemarketers.
And brokering business deals from the deck of a 124-year-old sailing ship.
Makes you wonder just who's serving who, these days.
HAL? Is that you out there?
