May 26 2008 by Paul Rowland, Western Mail
BETWEEN hover cars, mind control and robotic servants, Hollywood hasn’t got a great track record when it comes to predictions about the future.
But while the outlandish depictions of years to come featured on the silver screen have, more often than not, been less fact and more fiction, they haven’t all been wide of the mark.
A team of more than 50 international academics have named Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as the science fiction film with the most realistic vision of the future of mankind.
The pioneering 1968 film, an adaptation of a screenplay by Arthur C Clarke, deals with questions about the evolution of mankind, and the nature of artificial intelligence – epitomised by the supercomputer HAL 9000.
The group of scientists, including representatives from Cardiff University and the University of Glamorgan, alongside contemporaries from Oxford and King’s College London, judged that the cult sci-fi film featured the most plausible view of scientific progress.
Artificially intelligent super computers with the power to conspire against people, such as HAL, were considered the science fiction imagining most likely to become a reality.
Mark Brake, professor of Science Communication at the University of Glamorgan, said: “2001 raised science fiction cinema to a new level. The unfolding four-million-year filmic story brilliantly portrays Arthur C Clarke’s disturbing man-machine encounter with HAL a computer turned murderer.
“This unsettling scenario is not something we would ever want to imagine happening in reality, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that artificial intelligence could turn on its creators.”
Also rated highly was Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, which features artificial humans – known as “replicants” – who escape a space colony and return to Earth to confront their maker.
The film was praised by the experts for exploring the idea that we may one day develop the technology to create imitation humans.
Stephen Hsu, professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oregon, said: “There is every reason to believe that technology will someday permit us to genetically engineer human-like life forms like the ‘replicants’ in Blade Runner.
“Let’s hope we don’t exploit them for dirty and dangerous tasks as depicted in the movie, but rather allow them full human rights from the beginning.”
The third film seen as potentially scientifically accurate was the 1971 Michael Crichton adaptation, The Andromeda Strain, which follows the events which unfold when an unknown micro-organism is accidently brought to Earth from space and threatens to cause catastrophic damage to humankind.
Barry DiGregorio, research Associate for the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, and a member of the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return, said: “I have been campaigning against NASA’s plans to bring back samples from Mars as I believe they could possibly endanger the Earth’s biosphere with microbial contamination from the planet.
“In a worst case scenario this could lead to an Andromeda Strain-type situation. My concerns are based on the Viking biology data that were conducted on Mars in 1976. NASA have always opposed the claim that their data found microbial life on Mars, however, two NASA astrobiologists have publicly stated otherwise and I have worked with them to bring attention to their finds.”
The scientists polled as part of the Sky Movies study also voted 2001: A Space Odyssey as the film they most admired for its use of science and Blade Runner as the best science fiction film.
Topic: Academics reveal sci-fi film they think comes closest to our future (Read 897 times)