Monday, March 24, 2008

one of my boss' favorite stories....42

Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
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The 42 Puzzle, as it appeared in The Illustrated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything has a numeric solution in Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, a "simple answer" to The Ultimate Question is requested from the computer Deep Thought—specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer which turns out to be 42. Unfortunately, The Ultimate Question itself is unknown - suggesting on an allegorical level that it is more important to ask the right questions than to seek definite answers.
When asked to produce The Ultimate Question, the computer says that it can't, but can help design an even more powerful computer (the Earth) which can. The programmers then embark on a further, ultimately futile, ten million year program to discover The Ultimate Question, a process that is hindered after eight million years by the unexpected arrival on Earth of the Golgafrinchans, and then ruined completely, five minutes before completion, when the Earth is destroyed by the Vogons.

The author was presented with many readers' theories about The Ultimate Question and The Ultimate Answer in his lifetime, all of which he rebutted with his own somewhat apocryphal explanations.

or, in the words of my boss...'Eet ees what eet ees'.

1 comment:

WORKING MOM said...

Okay, so my mind is spinning, but I like your boss's take on it.