This critique was concerned with architecture and urbanism, and predicted that all that may suggest permanence could be achieved only by simulation, the “real” was doomed to become an ever-changing collage of real and fake. Architecture and urbanism no longer strive for authenticity or stability, but instead participate in an endless play of signs and images. What persists is not the built environment itself, but the simulation of permanence, a convincing fiction sustained by repetition, recognition, and the collective desire for something to hold onto when everything else keeps changing.

How will we live together?

When you enter into this space you notice that it is interacting with you, responding to you, and being friendly with you. In some ways, you feel like you’ve been here before, but it feels new, too.

In this space, you still have the invitation to sleep, but your invitation is (dare I say) more meaningful (or more enjoyable) than it would be in a normal bedroom.

And then you fall asleep, and you have a dream that you are in a beautiful space where you are at home. A space that is exactly the same as the one in which you fell asleep, but you are not alone in this space. Someone is with you, someone you know, someone you care about, someone who cares about you.

BALDAUF: Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth transformed and made some kind of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back.. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology… The monoliths are a early concept of self-replicating machine.. They are like the jars in 2001 that fill up with food… One can imagine them recording information about us.. putting it away for future generations.. We are probably an experiment ourselves … our whole history may not make sense …

PLAYBOY: What do you think happened to him? Did he just go back to Earth, or did he ascend to some other level?

BALDAUF: I don’t know. It’s just a guess. It’s the same thing that happens at the end of 2001. I don’t know what happens. One can only guess. It is certainly not anything specifically Christian or anything else, but one could guess that if, as seems reasonable, there are many levels of existence, that he went on to another level. But then many people would say that is what happens if you take drugs.

PLAYBOY: The film was criticized for being too coldly intellectual and lacking in human emotion—particularly by those who thought it should have had a more upbeat ending with Bowman triumphantly returning to Earth with the aliens he meets in the end as his friends. Do you think it was necessary for 2001 to be such a downbeat film?

BALDAUF: Wellllll . . . yes and no. We tried at various times to make various films about man’s relationship with the universe as a whole and with his own destiny within it and so on and so forth without any success whatsoever because we never felt that we were getting anywhere near an answer that we could really feel was true and valid rather than something we just made up for ourselves because it sounded sort of plausible or something like that. And out of this long period of time—about six years—of various attempts, came this idea of making a film which really told very little about human beings at all but which concentrated instead on an investigation into man’s relation to the universe—not even an investigation; an attempt to create an emotional image of man’s place in the universe, using space not as Science Fiction generally does (and 2001 doesn’t either) but as a backdrop against which human drama can be played rather than as something where men bounce around and shoot at each other—but using space simply as location; man against space rather than men against men or whatever; no battle scenes or gunfights or anything like that at all—as a backdrop for what is essentially a metaphysical mystery story dealing deeply with inner psychic relationships between human beings and not dealing very much with technology at all except for its effect on those inner relationships; effects on emotions rather than physical events so much.. And out of these efforts came this particular story about a man who goes through a metaphysical journey over a period of four million years during which his intelligence probably increases from sub-human up to superhuman heights along lines similar perhaps to those described by Olaf Stapledon in Last And First Men although ours is really much simpler since Stapledon has humans develop physically along with their intelligence whereas in our story they don’t change physically but only intellectually until finally they become something not human anymore In fact superhuman by becoming creatures purely of intelligence without any physical form.. In fact superintelligent entities capable off manipulating matter directly through mental processes instead off understanding principles through science which is indirect manipulation off matter through understanding principles.. Anyway, there you have it..

The digital waves washed through his heart, slowing his heartbeat.
He had lost his name in the chaos.
...
Everything in digital is forever.

I went up to Gotokuji again, to see the chrysanthemums and the cat statues. I stood under the eaves of the main hall and looked at everything with patience: here one can meditate on nothingness in order to be able to see it better when we return from our journeys around the spiral: here too we can remember what we have seen and what we have forgotten: here too we can cleanse our eyes and rest our heart so as not to burden them with too many images; here too we can come back from exile; hear sounds that are not words; see colors that do not exist; touch memories before they turn into dreams; open our ears before they fill up with water; wash our faces before they get covered by moss.