Skip to main content Accessibility Feedback

Love the Internet

From a brilliant post by Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, from 1999. He would have turned 60 yesterday.

I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is 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. Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.

His post is amazingly forward looking. His insights into the ability of the internet to connect people turned out to be spot-on. Be sure to read the full article - it’s brilliant.

Via Letters of Note on Twitter