Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey well, such as a nervous breakdown—as Hal did in the film. Clarke noted that, contrary to popular rumor, it was a complete coincidence that each of the letters of Hal's name immediately preceded those of IBM in the alphabet. The meaning of HAL has been given both as "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer" and as "Heuristic ALgorithmic computer". The former appears in Clarke's novel of "2001" and the latter in his sequel novel "2010". In computer science, a heuristic is a programmable procedure not necessarily based on fixed rules, producing informed guesses often using trial-and-error. The results can be false such
Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey yet no one in the movie had a small personal communication device. Some technologies portrayed as common in the film which had not materialized in the 2000s include commonplace civilian space travel, space stations with hotels, Moon colonization, suspended animation of humans, practical nuclear propulsion in spacecraft and strong artificial intelligence of the kind displayed by Hal. There are corporate logos and entities in the film that either didn't exist, no longer exist, or were broken up by anti-trust lawsuits. Still others changed their business model or represent countries that no longer exist. The British Broadcasting Corporation never expanded to