Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
Douglas AdamsRead
Because the Internet is so new, we still don't really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that's what we're used to. So people complain that there's a lot of rubbish online, or that it's dominated by Americans, or that you can't necessarily trust what you read on the Web.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the confusion and misunderstandings surrounding the Internet as a new medium.
Douglas Adams highlights the novelty of the Internet and how traditional media biases can shape our perceptions of it. He points out that many people misinterpret the Internet as merely a form of publishing or broadcasting, leading to complaints about its content and reliability, which stems from a lack of understanding of what the Internet truly represents.
Themes
InternetUnderstandingMediaReliabilityPerception
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion at a technology conference, one might cite this quote to illustrate how perceptions of digital media need to evolve.
More from Douglas Adams
All quotes β"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "Ask a glass of water."
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Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. [...] Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.
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Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it's still being invented; we're still trying to work out how it works. There's a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn't recognise. It's time for the machines to disappear. The computer's got to disappear into all of the things we use.
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What the computer in virtual reality enables us to do is to recalibrate ourselves so that we can start seeing those pieces of information that are invisible to us but have become important for us to understand.
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We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
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