I was watching a repeat of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy on TV. Deep Thought hesitates and then eventually reveals the answer to life the universe and everything, which thanks to Douglas Adams we know as being 42. Deep Thought then revealed that the proper question to ask would have to be uncovered by inventing a new computer…. The Earth.

With laptop on my increasingly battery warmed knee I wondered if Google knew the answer. So I typed in “the answer to life the universe and everything” into google and got….. wikipedia as the top answer in the search result list. Thats was sort of disapointing…. does that mean that Deep Thought is really just wikipedia? And if that is true then Google is Planet Earth?

I had hoped that a Douglas Adams site would be number 1, or at least highly rated – but it didn’t seem to be. It seems that the interconnectedness of all things (see Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for more info) has ensured that connecting bits of info up under a wikipedia umbrella has demoted the author of the answer. Shame? Well probably not, I think Douglas Adams got the power of the internet long before the rest of us and knew that this was bound to happen.

However from a Search Engine Optimisation point of view it’s disapointing that its a pedia that holds the answer and not a website called The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. But visitors to that site will find it flogging the DVD of the film – how terribly predictable.

As a mark of respect to the man who made me laugh out loud while reading I’ve added a couple of tags to help promote The Interconnectedness of all things.