I didn’t say they were “inherently” bad or that every bit of tech is evil in the film. Of course the tech is awesome. But it can also malfunction or be used for evil ends because we flawed humans make and use them; just as the bone is a neutral object but we made it into a tool that could be used for defensive or offensive means (but which still “kills” other apes). The satellite in the beginning was supposed to be a nuclear satellite, so it is showing one weapon essentially evolving into another. I happen to think it was necessary to create and maintain nuclear weapons (and still is); but that is because others would use that same “bone” to enslave us. It’s all about application. That is why I said it was “ONE” of the points of the bone.
In a way, the film is asking us how we will choose to use our “bones”.

I always thought that was ONE of the points of the bone in the opening. Our tools advanced from bones used as weapons to kill our own kind, to psycho computers “made in our image” that turn on us. HAL could also represent human intellect gone wrong.

The structure of the film is that the protagonist is humanity, and each of the three sections (prolog, act 1, acts 2 & 3 & epilog) follows the next step in alien-assisted evolution. Each act starts out with the mundane way of life of a character (bone-ape, Floyd, Bowman), he finds a monolith, and humanity moves up the ladder to the next level of evolution.

HAL’s dilemma is that the humans are planning to turn him off, which would jeopardize the mission, so HAL decides to get rid of the humans and carry out the mission himself. The problem is that that is actually entirely incidental to the story Kubrick is telling (the ascent of mankind) and merely serves as an entertaining complication. After all, we are not introduced to computers or tools earlier in the film as a kind of villain-of-our-own-making. But it ends up being so entertaining, that it takes over the movie.

Gold medal Super-win! for Trey for mentioning Space Food Sticks, the greatest chocolate rubber compound invented by mankind.

Teague is right in that there is no particular reason for Kubrick to “do” films the way he did them. But the same can be said for Tarantino’s time-shifting and Fellini’s dream sequences.

Trey is right that HAL has become a crutch for screenwriters. It has survived right up to I, Robot, in which a single central computer controls all the robots in the world.