Personally, I go more for poems than explanations. I have a feeling that moving through a network of associations - exploring the fundamental interconnectedness of all things - is a good way to find new ideas. So that's what we'll do today. Explore some ideas, and see where it gets us.
One more picture from 2001 -- this is HAL, the artificial intelligence computer from the film.
This is the scene where HAL is dying, because he's gone mad, and Dave Bowman - the one remaining astronaut - is having to deactivate him by pulling the modules of his A.I. - artificial intelligence - A.I. brain out.
HAL sings a poem as he progressively degrades, and it's heartbreaking, you really feel like something is dying, like HAL was really alive.
So I watched this when I was six, and I got obsessed with having a computer friend, and with sci-fi.
Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey
Matt Webb, Web Directions South 2014 (Sydney, Australia), October 2014