When I first saw Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey" in
1968, the year 2001 was so inestimably far away into the future at that
time that for all intents and purposes, we would never get there. That
future was available then only in the domain of science fiction.
Now, in mere days, it will be 2001. Two things are apparent. One: we
did get here. Two: that future does not look like anything envisioned
by "2001: A Space Odyssey". In many ways, we have neither lived up to
its promise nor to its potential.
That we did get here shows that the future comes regardless of us. That
we have neither lived up to the promise nor to the potential of "2001:
A Space Odyssey" shows the gap between a pedestrian life known as
"reality" and an intentionally generated life known as "possibility".