Influence
Douglas Adams, who was deeply involved with computer technology, founded the website h2g2 in 1999. In keeping with the Hitchhiker's Guide's tradition of being edited by random people off the street, h2g2 is an encyclopedia edited by thousands of contributors. The site's creation predates Wikipedia by two years, though several commentators have noted the similarities between Wikipedia and the Hitchhiker's Guide, particularly its wild variance in reliability and quality and its tendency to focus on topics of interest to its writers.
Project Galactic Guide, one of the first encyclopedia projects in the 1990s, was inspired by, and written in the style of, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. However, it does not seem to be actively maintained any longer.
Some have compared Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle to the Hitchhiker's Guide; indeed fans have designed "Don't Panic" covers for both.
Read more about this topic: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (fictional)
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world ... and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)