A lot of books have predicted technological advancements that have occurred in our lifetime. In fact, technology is moving at such a rate that each time it catches up with a thirty year-old book, it’s hard to get too excited. Regardless, it’s pretty amazing when you consider the way these ideas were originally conceived, written and in some cases presented in eventual movie/television versions of the book.
Case in point… The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (one of the few books I actually read way back when).
Published in 1979, the centrepiece of this humourous Douglas Adams novel is a hand-held electronic reference book for “backpackers” of the star systems. Entries from the electronic guide including explanations of alien races, intergalactic politics and fish that translate all languages (Babel fish, which became the namesake for Yahoo!’s online translation service) are peppered throughout the book.
When Hitchhiker’s first came out, we all believed or wanted to believe this technology would one day be available for the masses. And it has been in a variety of forms over the years. I must admit that I’d never thought much about that until reading the book to my two daughters over the last few weeks.
From the first mention of the electronic book in the novel, I thought of my iPad. While I’ve only recently become comfortable with giving up the tangible experience of reading a book for the virtual one of reading on the iPad, the device was designed with screen-based reading as one of its most central features. Of course, the iPad is so much more than that – a tool for content consumption, creation, productivity and entertainment. And, somewhat ironically, it’s the device on which my daughters and I started watching the original BBC television series of Hitchhiker’s over YouTube last night.
So, when it comes to the absence of our long awaited jet cars and teleports, don’t panic.
Photo: Don’t Panic Badge uploaded to Flickr by Jim Linwood.
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