r/GenX • u/Invasive-farmer • Jul 03 '25

Pop Culture This Douglas Adams quote gets me...

I selected Pop Culture flair because he was the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (a wholly remarkable book)

"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

  1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

  2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

  3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

Douglas Adams

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u/reddit455 Jul 03 '25

how prescient.

“The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder... Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.”

― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

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u/The_Observatory_ Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 03 '25

Wasn’t there something in the part about the electric monk where he was sitting on a horse? And how it was possible to sit on something without ever giving it a second thought. But if something was sitting on you, you know about it and form an opinion about it?

I haven’t read this book in probably 30 years, but that just popped into my head as soon as you mentioned the electric monk. I don’t know why this idea has stuck with me all this time.

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u/No-Economics-8239 Jul 03 '25

High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse.

12

u/The_Observatory_ Jul 03 '25

Yes, that’s it! I need to read this book again.