On the settlement of earth
a) people invented the wheel pretty quickly but the marketing people couldn’t decide what color it should be
b) they chose leaves for currency but got hyperinflation so they burned the forests down
Douglas Adams was the best. I got an email from him one time!
So in 1994/5, I was discovering Gopher and the text-based www, and I found his https://cambridge.edu email address. I emailed telling him how much fun I had playing the Infocom HHGttG game with my mom as a kid. His reply:
Adams gave a keynote speech at a corporate tech conference I attended in the early 90s, we all loved him but I wonder what he made of us. I can’t recall the details but I think he was polite and funny and did not eviscerate us. It was the highlight of the 2 day conference
A particular segment of the modern day tech sector: "𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 [𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘢] 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆 [𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵-𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭-𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘨𝘪𝘣𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘨𝘢𝘴𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦]!"
I received a “smart water bottle” as a corporate give away, it had a base with flashing lights to remind me to hydrate. It had to be charged and to set it up would require me to login to an app. Luckily the base is removable and it is a nice water bottle without it
The 1986 Worldcon was at a hotel in Atlanta that had talking elevators (announced the floors in an annoying robot voice). I totally disgraced myself when I spotted the small bronzish plaque someone stuck next to the floor-number panel: "Another fine product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation".
“A copy of Encyclopedia Galactica from a thousand years in the future that happened to fall through a wormhole defined the marketing devision of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation as a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came”
That was it. I love the way the Encyclopedia Galactica, basically the antithesis of the Hitchhiker's Guide, agrees with it in time. There's something very beautiful and hopeful and cynical about that.
Comments
Guess we have to add those people to the group ;-)
a) people invented the wheel pretty quickly but the marketing people couldn’t decide what color it should be
b) they chose leaves for currency but got hyperinflation so they burned the forests down
Love that trilogy of four books 🙃
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So in 1994/5, I was discovering Gopher and the text-based www, and I found his https://cambridge.edu email address. I emailed telling him how much fun I had playing the Infocom HHGttG game with my mom as a kid. His reply:
Thank you!