“It has always struck me as being bizarre that the idea of God as a creator was considered sufficient explanation for the complexity we see around us, because it simply doesn’t explain where he came from. If we imagine a designer, that implies a design, and that therefore each thing he designs or causes to be designed is a level simpler than him -or herself, then you have to ask, “What is the level above the designer?” There is one peculliar model of the universe that has turtles all the way down, but here we have gods all the way up. It isn’t really a good answer — but a bottom-up solution, on the other hand, that rests on the incredibly powerful tautology that “anything that happens, happens” clearly gives you a very simple and powerful answer that needs no other explanation whatsoever.”
Douglas Adams goes on to break the evolution of man into “ages of sand.” The first being man’s recognition of the world around him. Man next fashions sand into glass, and later lenses and is able to see that at our very basic components, we are all made of nothing. In the grand scope of an infinate universe, we are basically nothing. The third age of sand is silicon. Before wires and electrity and computers, the only news we heard was that which directly effected us. Now, the world is able to effect us, but we do not effect the world. What effect does this have on us? Are we being addicted to information which, a hundred years ago, would not – could not effect us? What’s the fourth age of sand? The internet? Some interesting reading.
I don’t think I’m going to read the last part… I havn’t read any of the previous Dirk Gently books. Although, check out this description from Adams himself:
“Dirk Gently, hired by someone he never meets to do a job that is never specified, starts following people at random. His investigations lead him to Los Angeles, though the nasal membranes of a rhinoceros, to a distant future dominated by estate agents and heavily armed kangaroos. Jokes, lightly poached fish, and the emergent properties of complex systems form the background to Dirk Gently’s most baffling in imprehensible case.”
Maybe I will.
