Apart from space exploration, computer technology is the biggest difference between the 2001 of A Space Odyssey and the 2001 of Real Life. In 2001: ASO, just about the only interesting character is a heartless artificially intelligent computer on a spacecraft. More than a decade beyond that, the closest we have in real life are smart phones that can answer questions in an almost realistic fashion, but nobody suggests they are actually aware. And yet… smart phones. If you look at some of the secondary stuff available about the props made for 2001:ASO, nothing even close to the compactness and elegance of the laptops and Blackberrys and cell phones available in the real world of 1999 . Still, one of the props was for a computer-in-a-briefcase:
This “portable computer” has a screen, a keyboard, a video camera, audio input/output. Functionally, it appears to be able to at least kinda-sorta replicate a laptop with a webcam and Skype. But compared to a laptop, it’s clunky as hell. How to explain the existence of the HAL 9000 artificial intelligence, and yet the apparently backwards smaller computers? Well… the simple answer is “this was a movie dreamed up in ’64, and they did the best they could.” But that’s boring. How to explain it in terms of an alternate history? I think I’ve got that one figured out.
History begins to really diverge in 1969 with a space program that Nixon decides to *not* gut. Given the previously explained explosion of funding for NASA and great expansion of actual space exploration, there would of course be a great need in the government for powerful new computers. The expanded space program would also spur technology as a whole… not just because NASA needs all new everythings, but because more people would be *inspired* to go into science, technology and engineering. You’d think that, if anything, this would lead to the commercial computer business exploding earlier, not later. But consider… with NASA hiring everyone with skill, and promising – and delivering – the universe, things would be different. For example: Bill Gates, long a computer aficionado, dropped out of Harvard in Real World 1974 to go into business for himself. But by 1974 in the alternate timeline, things are rapidly starting to diverge in important ways with the space program. so… instead of going into business for himself, in the alternate timeline he stays in college because he’s more inspired by progress in Big Time computers. After graduation, he gets himself a respectable job someplace like IBM and does great things… and vanishes within the vast sea of cubicals, never to be heard from again.
On the other side, Steve Jobs IRL spent much of the early 1970’s messing around with computers… and messing around with Eastern mystical newage. In 1976, he and Steve Wozniak – who seems to have the technically-capable one of the two – formed Apple Computers. Jobs’ artsy creativity, and Wozniak’s ability to make good computers, combined with Gate’s business savvy – and a hell of a lot of other people, working at many, many computer companies large and small – led to the commercial computer revolution. But if Gates was embedded deep within IBM, and Wozniak was busy working for, say, NASA directly, and Jobs had run off to some Indian ashram to spend the next several decades navel-gazing in a haze of LSD… that might have helped contribute to a world in which the growth of consumer electronics is greatly slowed. The computer-in-a-suitcase illustrates, if nothing else, that the design ethic towards sleek and ‘sexy” mastered by Jobs and Apple clearly never caught on in the world of 2001:ASO.
The internet would exist in the world of 2001:ASO, though of course quite different than IRL. The internet was an outgrowth of ARPAnet, which came into being in 1968. The need for ARPAnet would be every bit as great, probably more so, in the 2001 timeline, as the threat of nuclear war is stronger and lasts longer in that world. But the civilian aspects of the internet would be greatly reduced. I suspect the internet might exist in the 2001:ASO timeframe much as it existed in the late 1980’s IRL, but with perhaps better bandwidth: lots of scientific data being transmitted, and discussion and news forums (remember newsgroups?), but with far less of the multimedia glitz and glam.With the existence of video telephones (as demonstrated by Bell Telephone on Space Station V), I suspect a lot of the drive for internet social media would be slightly damped.
If you consider the Real World to be balanced between Big Institutional Computers and Consumer Electronics, the world of 2001: ASO would be tilted drastically, with far more emphasis on big, powerful computers far beyond the reach of average folk, and far less emphasis on computers for the masses. Given that this opinion is being published on a blog, this world may seem “unfair” to us, but to the people of ASO, they’d see it as good and proper. And given that the result of this would be children spending less time online and more time doing other stuff (admittedly, that might well be just watching TV), that would probably tend towards being better for society.
The 2010 book and movie are tertiary and basically non-canon sources. However, it should be noted that the movie shows Dr. Heywood Floyd preparing for his mission to Jupiter by working on a portable computer… an Apple IIc computer with a small separate display screen. Horribly clunky by real-world 2010 standards, this was a 1984-vintage computer slightly dressed up to look like a truly portable computer. This would indicate that computer design, by 2010, has slipped behind real life by about a quarter century. One possible advance over real computers would be the virtual necessity of much better batteries… I suspect an Apple IIc would burn through a modern laptop battery in very short order.
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