How accurate was Kubrick's 2001 about the future?

A very interesting post on Currybetdotnet, examining the various things that Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey got right and wrong about the future. (Er, or the past, for us. But it was the future, in 1968.)

I think the author doesn't give the film quite enough credit in some ways. For instance, 2001 was shot before we'd ever actually set foot on the moon, but the film's depiction of the lunar surface is spot-on. And even if the film fails to capture what the real year 2001 ended up being like, it presents an amazingly persuasive alternate history by taking the NASA tech of the space age and extrapolating where it would go in the coming decades. You watch that movie, and it's hard to believe those are wooden sets and plastic spaceship models. You really feel like you're seeing life in space.

Sigh. Kubrick's 2001 had routine flights to the moon, cryogenic sleep and superintelligent computers that are pretty awesome when they're not trying to toss you out of the airlock to die in space. Our 2001 had 9/11, George W. Bush and "Bennifer". I think we got the raw end of that deal.

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