Product Description

Reflecting on science fiction's most famous computer, this book explores the relationship between science fantasy and technological fact. Nontechnical chapters describe many of the areas of computer science critical to the design of intelligent machines, discuss whether scientists in the 1960s were accurate about the prospects for advacement in their fields and look at how HAL has influenced scientific research. Contributions look at the technologies that would be critical to attempt to build a HAL in 1997.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #627840 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From the Author
RESOURCES ASSOCIATED WITH HAL'S LEGACY
You can read several chapters of "HAL's Legacy" online at:

http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/Hal/

and see some of the celebrations associated with the birth of the HAL 9000 computer at:

http://matia.stanford.edu/~stork/HALTalks.html.

The book is profusely illustrated with images from "2001" and current research, and is written for nonscientific and scientific audiences alike, and will appeal especially to fans of science fantasy and technological reality familiar with the film. It consists of chapters specially written by world leaders in various aspects of computer science, as listed on the Table of Contents. The book has four main goals:

1) Compare the vision of computer science as
expressed in "2001: A Space Odyssey" with
actual developments in the 30 years since the
film's release.

2) Teach basic aspects of computer science, such as
speech recognition, computer vision, language
understanding, lipreading, and artificial
intelligence, and the difficulties in solving
them.

3) Shed greater light on the movie itself, giving the
viewer a deeper aesthetic appreciation of the
film.

4) Show how the film influenced the careers of
budding computer scientists.

The book sheds light on key moments of the film: you will never see "2001" (or your own computer) the same way again.

Customer Reviews

Dave...Don't Stop!
Prior to attending a lecture by Dr. David Stork at a celebration of HAL 9000's birthday in Urbana, Illinois, I had only a passing interest in the field of Artificial Intelligence. After the lecture, I was motivated to learn more and bought a copy of his book, Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer As Dream and Reality. It turned out to be one of the most thought-provoking as well as entertaining books I have read. Through a series of expert essays, Stork explores the current state and direction of Artificial Intelligence using HAL as both backdrop and benchmark. Non-technical readers will enjoy the way that the scientists that Stork has chosen present their theories of what it would take for us to realize Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's vision of HAL. HAL's Legacy analyzes the prospects and possibilities of computers being able to converse, understand natural language, visualize, feel emotion, and even make value judgements. It also give the reader a new appreciation of the science that went into the science fiction of the movie 2001.

A fascinating account of progress of artificial intelligence
This is a well written and easy to understand book about artificial intelligence. This book examines "2001: A Space Odyssey," from the standpoint of scientific predictions. It examines the central character of the book - HAL 9000, the highly intelligent computer that has emotions. It explores questions such as whether HAL can be built, why is HAL late for his party and how the technologies, enabling HAL, are progressing. It also examines the feature film from the view point of a scientist. It examines the making of the film and shows how faithfulness it is to science. You will gain a much greater appreciation of the book "2001: A Space Odyssey" and the epic film after you read the book.

Good, but...
I was very distracted by the poor editing of this book. Not only was it riddled with spelling errors but I also found misplaced words which changed the meaning of an entire sentence. On top of that, the book started falling apart before I was even done reading it.

However, getting by these symptoms of a quickly thrown together book, the content was very enjoyable. Specifically reading from some of the top minds in the industry. Although a few of the authors obviously clipped out previously written material and slapped the word 'HAL' in a few places to keep with the theme.