While I'm thinking on this: has anybody seen 2001 lately?

I think I saw it again a year or so ago. Every time I watch it, I am a) bored, because some of the scenes are so incredibly drawn out, and b) impressed with the depiction of the HAL 9000. The imagery and design around HAL was incredible for 1968, and still holds up today. It was one of the first movies to have computers showing something other than blocky, pixelated graphics (or any graphics at all).

Compare it to something like The Thing, made 14 years later in 1982, and its "simulation" of the thing they found in the ice.

HAL 9000 is depicted as something beautiful, a monument to human creation. And when HAL started to show his flaws, it was made apparent that intelligence was something more than designer graphics and thoughtless automation.

HAL is easily one of my favorite characters depicted as computers or robots.