“In the beginning, there was a horde of monkeys; in the end, there was Weltgeist incarnate. But what form might allow us to bridge such a time gap? The year was 1967 when Stanley Kubrick posed this perplexing question. The English director was hard at work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, the first legitimate science fiction movie and ultimately his masterpiece. One key part in the script proved itself to be almost uncastable: the role of extraterrestrial intelligence. The strange entity was to be tasked first with initiating the humanization of the apes and then, millions of years later, proceeding to guide the human species beyond the realm of its own limits. And thus Kubrick asked: What might constitute a form able to self-evidently embody the highest level of intelligence? In what material might such a teacher of consciousness clad itself? A consciousness, lest it be forgotten, representative of the entire universe as a development program. Something able to symbolically sum up the process of becoming intelligent as the principle of humanity—in anticipation of its fulfillment. What might that look like? Kubrick came to the conclusion that the pinnacle of mental performance must lie in successful simplification. […]”