A couple of years ago I asked this question, based on a dimly remembered name from THHGTTG, about whether the Guide had originally been invented by someone named Web. I thought it was a neat coincidence, if true.
Well, as I recently got hold of the DVD of the 1980s BBC TV series, I can report that I was almost right. In the graphics sequence in episode (I think) 5, relating facts about the universe (8 ningis = 1 Triganic pu, etc.), there’s a brief drawing of the editor of the Guide, who goes by the name Web Nixo.
[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
It really is amazing that the guide seemed like such a neat but unlikely device a quarter-century ago.
Now we can see it for what it is: A Wi-Fi enabled PDA.
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I remember at first reading being utterly flummoxed as to what an “electronic book” could possibly be. The idea of a viewscreen never occurred to me, as a book has to have pages, right? The best I could visualize was a few plastic sheets that print would scroll up like the Star Wars opening blurb, sandwiched in between two stiffer plastic sheets, with the whole shebang tucked into a case like the boxlike pressboard case my copy of Little Women came in. And I could never work out where the buttons came in.
[QUOTE=Marley23]
It would fit perfectly with the guide’s inaccuracies and its policy of ‘when the guide disagrees with reality, it’s reality that has got it wrong.’
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This would be the precursor to Truthiness, wouldn’t it?
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I remember at first reading being utterly flummoxed as to what an “electronic book” could possibly be. The idea of a viewscreen never occurred to me, as a book has to have pages, right? The best I could visualize was a few plastic sheets that print would scroll up like the Star Wars opening blurb, sandwiched in between two stiffer plastic sheets, with the whole shebang tucked into a case like the boxlike pressboard case my copy of Little Women came in. And I could never work out where the buttons came in.
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That sounds an awful lot like electronic paper
I was about 18 when I first read the books and listened to the radio series (1981?) and the visual image I formulated of the Guide was like an over-sized calculator with a large screen, so I suppose I wasn’t too far off.
[QUOTE=Colophon]
But these days we can see that roving researchers such as Ford Prefect would hardly be necessary – surely the Guide would work better as a wiki?
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Not really, you might need the reporters to cover the lesser known areas of space, like earth, that practicaly no one goes to.
[QUOTE=Martha]
I was about 18 when I first read the books and listened to the radio series (1981?) and the visual image I formulated of the Guide was like an over-sized calculator with a large screen, so I suppose I wasn’t too far off.
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I had one of those scientific calculators with the big screen and a plastic cover that slid over the top. Of course, I drew the DON’T PANIC logo on the cover in Biro.
