Philosophy, Technology and Culture in the Visual Discourse of the Film 2001: A Space Odyssey

Abstract

Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, explores the relationship between technology, culture and discourse. The film, premiered in 1968, refers to subtexts in which the director asks about existence, being, time, artificial intelligence, will, life, death and rebirth. Therefore, this paper seeks to address the complex spectrum represented in the well-known intergalactic odyssey to generate a possible answer to the questions: How are the philosophical panoramas that reveal an interconnection between culture and technology interwoven in the audiovisual argument of the film? How do culture and technology relate to the term evolution as a creative mechanism of the human and, at the same time, as the architect of its destruction? These questions could be answered with the following hypothesis: 2001: A Space Odyssey reveals a relationship between culture and technology for the elaboration of a discourse that highlights the double articulation of the term evolution as a mechanism that creates the human and at the same time, as the architect of its destruction.