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Cautionary Tales · October 15, 2025 · 40m
Don't Panic! Douglas Adams' Guide to Tomorrow
Cautionary Tales
How Douglas Adams — author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — predicted the internet, smartphones, and AI decades before they existed. Harford examines why science fiction writers often see the future more clearly than technologists.
Highlights
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Science fiction anticipates technology better than technologists because it starts with human needs
Adams predicted the internet (the Guide), smartphones (the Babel fish), and crowdsourced knowledge (Wikipedia as a fictional concept) because he thought about what humans WANT, not what engineers could BUILD.•
Technology is adopted only when it meets a pre-existing human need
Harford argues that successful technologies don't create new needs — they satisfy existing ones more efficiently. The smartphone succeeded because it addressed ancient desires (connection, knowledge, entertainment) in a new form.