Tag Archives: Douglas Adams

How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet

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Here’s a fun essay from Douglas Adams: How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet. He says that attitudes toward technology go like this:

  1. everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
  2. anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
  3. anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Homework

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This is a part of the homework feature of my blog, which is an ongoing conversation with my mate S.F.

I found OWC Docks & Hubs. This Thunderbolt 3 Dock looks pretty good.

The stomping kitties video I mentioned is Rathergood – Communist Kittens sing Tanz Mit Laibach by Laibach but unfortunately it’s been taken down for copyright reasons. :(

There are some notes about uniforms on Wikipedia, there are also a bunch of books on the topic of the history of uniforms over on Amazon.

I found a preview for Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Might try and grab it on iTunes some time.

The Foo Fighters track that I said I thought was pretty good was The Pretender. But on listening to it again now it’s not about what I thought it was about when I thought it was pretty good! :P

The expression jamais vu is a sense of unfamiliarity with, or of never having experienced or seen before, something that should be familiar. Like when you walk into your bedroom and have the feeling like you’re seeing it for the first time.

The Prisoner’s dilemma is an interesting thought experiment from game theory.

Never forget Hits from the Bong from Cypress Hill.

The quote about how to fly from Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything is:

“The Guide says there is an art to flying”, said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

I’m gonna put The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy in Five Parts on my wish list.

Also there is quite a lot of material on the subject of psychological boundaries.

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I posted to the talk page on Wikipedia regarding phrases from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and said:

I think that Adams was saying that the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is that it’s “for two”. Life’s not much if you’re not sharing it with someone. I think he wanted you to figure this out for yourself, which is why he denied the number had any significance. He was a genius.

jj5 (talk) 04:18, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I have the feeling that some shmuck is going to end up deleting my comment though, so figured I’d post it over here on my blog where it will be safe from deletion.

That Adams’s quote lends itself so readily to this profound interpretation I think is testament to the fact that he intended it, even if he did deny it. If it’s a coincidence, it is a remarkable and beautiful one.