Zinzin

Stanley Kubrick

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Daisy Bell, Official Song of the Singularity?

Composite image of the red circular "eye" of the HAL 9000 and a Victorian drawing of a couple on a 2-seater bicycle from the sheet music for the song "Daisy Bell"

Daisy Bell, give me your answer do!

Sometimes the unlikeliest of songs from the past can echo across vast stretches of time. It seems improbable that the people who sang with voices long since silenced ever imagined us, living far in their future, discovering and marveling at what they left behind.

They have given us, inadvertently, a time machine into the past.

A perfect example of this is a song called “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Build for Two).” Seventy-six years after its debut, it appeared again in the great 1968 Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. And it’s now even more relevant.

Let’s dig into its story and lasting influence.

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Tech Company Naming: Get Your SaaS in Gear 

C'mon get SasSsy

At Zinzin, we love to name drop. Especially, when it’s a name we created for our fabulous client, Antimatter, doing sassy new things in the world of software as a service (SaaS).

That’s right; we said it: sassy.

Let’s take a look at two seemingly unconnected dots: the B2B SaaS infrastructure company, Antimatter, and why the word “sassy” is more than our attempt at being cute with SaaS. Zinzin believes both characteristics — serious and sassy — can successfully co-exist in a name when it maps true to its brand positioning.

Aside: We freely admit that we love to play with language. It’s part of Zinzin’s naming process. And it’s often how Zinzin brains make the most unlikely creative connections for our clients.

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Reflections on the Monolith: Kubrick, McCracken, Zeppelin, Nothing

2001 A Space Odyssey - Monolith with apes
Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Monolith with apes

I had the privilege to know and work with the artist John McCracken (1934–2011) as an undergraduate art student. McCracken began making his famous leaning “plank” sculptures and freestanding “monoliths” in the mid-1960s, before Stanley Kubrick’s famous monolith appeared in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

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How HAL From “2001: A Space Odyssey” Got His Name (and no, it’s not IBM minus one)

Hal 9000

The HAL 9000 computer is one of the stars of Stanley Kubrick’s science-fiction film masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the novel it is based on by Arthur C. Clarke. Legend has it that the name HAL was derived because each letter comes one place before IBM in the alphabet. Arthur C. Clarke has always denied this, and the true origin of HAL’s name is recounted on the HAL 9000 Wikipedia page:

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Name origins: A Clockwork Orange

Alex from Stanley Kubrick's, A Clockwork Orange

The recent New Yorker science fiction issue, their first ever, included a great essay by Anthony Burgess from 1973, The Clockwork Condition. Burgess discusses his most famous book, A Clockwork Orange, and the “very close film interpretation” by Stanley Kubrick. Most interesting is Burgess’ description of the origin of the title, as well as the various lexicographical connotations of the antihero’s name, Alex:

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