Douglas Adams, science and new technologies

Douglas Adams was very proud of being born in 1952 at Cambridge and having the initials of DNA. Is it really a surprise that the author, born the same year and place that the DNA helix was discovered, would turn out to be so passionate about science and new technologies?

Douglas Adams believed in the positive offerings of scientific and technological progress. With a certain irony, he said that we were often scared by anything new because we always took what we knew from our youth as a standard of judgment.

He believed that the world could be explained by reasoning. Scientific discoveries in biology, physics and astronomy gave him reasoned explanations about the way the world functioned and of the origin of Earth and life. He was an adept of neo-Darwinism, acquired through his friend Richard Dawkins. Douglas described Darwinism as being a tautology : the one who survives… simply survives. It is a unique tautology in the sense that it needs no justification, but it in turns provides an incalculable number of explanations. Douglas thought that it was the prime principle of all that existed in the universe.

Deep Thought

DNA was always much appreciated in scientific and computer communities, probably because they were well placed to admire the complex universe and twisted imaginary of his writings (from the improbability drive to the concept of Earth being a gigantic computer to solve the question to the ultimate answer).

They even appreciated DNA’s derision of their own ambitions: scientists have always dreamed of a simple and synthetic theory that explains the universe. Hence “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to The Galaxy” series and it’s joke around the number 42 which has always been greatly popular in their midst as would testify MJ Simpson, author of “The Utterly Unauthorized Guide To The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide”. In the mid 90s, we can imagine the surprise of the Cambridge scientists who were trying to calculate the age of the universe and came up with the number… 42! Keith Grange, one of the project’s chief scientists said it had been the cause of a great many jokes especially as they were all great fans of the Hitchhiker’s guide.

Last and surprising tribute, on the 10 May 2001, one day before Douglas’death, an asteroid, discovered in 1998, was officially designated as “ArthurDent”, one of the central characters from Hitchhikers.

Richard Dawkins always felt that to fully appreciate Douglas Adams novels, one should really be scientific : « you can’t understand many of the jokes in Hitchhiker if you don’t know a lot of advanced science. And in modern electronic technology he was a real expert. We talked science a lot, in private, and even in public at literary festivals and on the wireless or television. And he became my guru on all technical problems ».

He worked several times with the computer-high tech industry. The first time in 1984 when he made the Hitchhiker’s text based adventure computer game with Steve Merertzky for Infocom. He then worked on a cd rom for “Last Chance to see”. And of course he co-founded the dotcom company The Digital Village with created h2g2 (the online Hitchhiker’s guide) and an other adventure game “Starship Titanic”

Reflecting his preoccupations and interests, Douglas directed a four episode series named “Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Future” for BBC Radio 4. In it he deals with several questions: will the electronic book lead to the downfall of traditional printed books? Will MIDI and MP3 bring anything new to music? Will interactive television and cinema allow everyone to become their own film makers? Will man ever be overcome by it’s own technologies pushed to the extreme? To give as much food for thought as possible to the listeners Douglas Adams interviewed many people, from the musician Peter Gabriel right through to a researcher expert in nano-technologies.

As a result of this mutual fascination, since the 80s, Douglas was often the guest of honour for a great many scientific and technological meetings. He made a few recognised allocutions, the best of which is the “Is There An Artificial God?” speech given in September 1998 at the Digital Biota 2 in Cambridge. This speech is transcribed in the posthumous book “Salmon Of Doubt” (2002).

adamsscience1 Indeed, it was his passion for science and his obsession to understand everything that got him interested in new technologies, although he steered clear of primary fetishism: he made great fun of the generation who fantasized over liquid crystal display watches! Nevertheless, he liked being at the forefront of computer technology. He adopted the Internet since the very beginning (in 1983 he used an american based service called the Source), and was then a great user of newsgroups. Of course, he bought personal computers from the first generations, as soon as 1982 : “It was a stand alone word processor called a Nexus which was horrendously expensive by today’s standards and probably less powerful than the free calculator you’d get in a Chistmas cracker”.

Years later, he fell upon the Apple machines, which he would stay fervently faithful to until his death. The Californian company would even give him the honorific title of Apple Master. Only a few months before his death, he had on his desk two PowerMac G4 computers with Apple Cinema Displays, a PowerBook, three iMacs and even an old G3!

Well, he certainly doesn’t use his computers in a common way : “I’ve just spent a cheerful hours of my time writing a program on my computer that will tell me instantly what the volume of the mound was. It’s a very neat and sexy program with all sorts of pop-up menus and things, and the advantage of doing it the way I have is that on any future occasion on which I need to know the volume of a megapode nest, given its basic dimensions, my computer will give the answer in less than a second, which is a wonderful saving of time. The downside, I suppose, is that I cannot conceive of any further occasion that I am likely to need to know the volume of a megapode nest,… ” (Last chance to see, p.37)

On its side, the computer community often makes references to DNA and his works. On the Internet the babel fish was used by AltaVista to name its web page translation services and there are hundreds of online versions of the Galactic Guide. There is software called Trillian and computer games like Fallout 2 make constant references to the books. Also the TIFF format, a tag-based file format for storing and interchanging raster images, created by Adobe (creators of Photoshop) is based on 42 : “An arbitrary but carefully chosen number (42) that further identifies the file as a TIFF file” explains the Adobe official documentation for the sixth version (1992). In previous versions of TIFF, Adobe explained that the number 42 has been “chosen for its deep, philosophical meaning”.

And many High tech giants were fans. Sir Clive Sinclair, creator of the famous computers in the eighties, bought an advance copy of “So Long…” from Douglas for one thousand pounds (given to Greenpeace) !

Douglas worked several times with the computer-high tech industry. The first time in 1984 when he made the Hitchhiker’s text based adventure computer game with Steve Merertzky for Infocom. He then worked on a cd rom for “Last Chance to see”. And of course he co-founded the dotcom company The Digital Village with created h2g2 (the online Hitchhiker’s guide) and an other adventure game “Starship Titanic”

As a result of this mutual fascination, since the 80s, Douglas was often the guest of honor for a great many scientific and technological meetings. He made a few recognised allocutions, the best of which is the “Is There An Artificial God?” speech given in September 1998 at the Digital Biota 2 in Cambridge. This speech is transcribed in the posthumous book “Salmon Of Doubt” (2002).

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future