54 Years ago !!

A few weeks before Christmas, after dithering for a couple of years, we took advantage of a seasonal offer at Best Buy and bought a new (Sony OLED) TV. This afternoon I finally got around to hooking up a DVD player – I mean, who uses DVD anymore? – and tested it with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

What a fascinating ten minutes that was … it’s still a terrific film, but the ideas from 1968 of what the world would be like in 2001, let alone today in 2022 were a little off from reality. Fashion and hairstyles apparently were not expected to change significantly at all but there were no smartphones or tablets, no laptops, the computers were resplendent with large internally lit buttons, and no Siri or Alexa though later in the film they did have HAL.

I had forgotten that the space ship that took them up to orbit was owned by Pan-Am (remember them?) and the accommodation on the space station was a Hilton hotel. On arriving at the space station they were asked by a very polite young lady on a pixelated wall screen to state surname and Christian name … when did you last hear the term Christian name used? How the world has changed since we saw the film on first release in the Odeon Cinema, Wolverhampton.

Now we are hooked up we will watch it through in the next few days for a bit of nostalgic wallowing ( … and then back to wading through 122 episodes of Midsomer Murders.)

“Open the bay doors, HAL”