No longer think digital watches a pretty neat idea? What's a pretty neat idea now???

Cafe Society
1

Although they avoid the topic of digital watches in the new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie, I have though that any update of the story would have to change the object that humans still think of as being a pretty neat idea.

If you were to touch up the “digital watches” passage for 2005 what would you change it to (if you would change it at all).

I’ll submit:

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape- descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think camera cell phones are a pretty neat idea.

2

iPods…

3

the internet

4

organized religon

5

Organized iPod-based internet religions.

6

Democracy

7

I was actually about to post this question last week, but decided that without a doubt, the neatest idea we have right now is the Internet.

8

I was going to suggest camera cell phones, but since that’s already taken, I’ll toss out “cell phone ringtones.”

9

Say, what ever happened to digital watches, anyway?

10

Blackberries.

11

The scroll wheel on computer mice, perhaps?

12

they got assimilated into everything else, like camera phones for example.

13

As a bit of a hijack… was the original point of that line mostly to mock everyone who thought digital watches were the bee’s knees (as it were) or did Adams himself think they were pretty cool at the time??

Just mentioned this because Adams has several quotes out there about how truly revolutionary and amazing the internet is in terms of the human experience… and IIRC in ‘salmon of doubt’ there was a mention of the press conference announcing the ipod or something, and the fact that Douglas missed it by about six months, and wondering what he would have thought of it, being a big Mac fan and all that.

14

I think that joke was that you needed both hands to work the earliest models, and how is that an improvement?

15

I know someone with the line “…even the ones with digital watches” tattooed above her ankle. I wonder how she feels about the new film. :smack:

So many classic lines omitted …so much crap inserted. :wink:

16

Video phones that tell you how much time you have to mow the lawn before it rains. Oh, and the pollen count, so you’ll know if you can breathe when you’re done.

17

Also, remember that this line on digital watches is then recapitulated when Dent and Ford run into the Infinite Improbability Field…

But yes, for general gadgettry-for-gadgetry’s-sake I’d have to go for cameraphones with downloadable ringtones. And by the early 80s many people were indeed starting to grow disenchanted with digital watches.

18

I have a digital watch, which is solar powered, and synchronizes with an atomic clock down south somewhere, through mysTERious etherial waves.
It also is highly resistant to damage… the only time I had one die on me due to physical trauma was when I got hit by a bus. (So, I’m standing on the street, and someone asks where the nearest hardware store is. I point across the street, looking at them, at the same time a bus screeches to a stop at the curb. My hand kinda bounced back and spun me around and I fell over. Watch died, but all I got was a bruise)

I think that’s still pretty neat. Also, it tells time in a whole bunch of different cities. Including mine.

19

…but…but…but…

cameraphones ARE a pretty neat idea!

right?

::dejectedly takes picture of crotch and posts it on internet, where no one ever looks at it::

20

Cite? :smiley: