!["[people] so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy](https://external-preview.redd.it/z75w1uS2chnb_wGKpVQGsCZHe_Va1-xEscM8HX6OfZQ.jpeg?width=216&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=709948ecec6f23bce27a6d16b3a67d6b703c54e6)
"[people] so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/54481-far-out-in-the-uncharted-backwaters-of-the-unfashionable-end
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. 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 digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Rule 3 explanation:
The book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was written in the late 1970's.
At the time, digital watches were poorly made devices. The book couldn't foresee that nearly everyone would have advanced microcomputers in the form of smartphones with them acting not only as watches, but full on phones, computers, GPS, and data routers.
"Digital Watches" along with smartphones have literally transformed life on Earth. /serious
They aren't a novelty like the watches in the 1970's. Which what the book was commenting on.
Example: How many users here are reading and commenting on this with their smartphone right now? How many own smartwatches. How many are experimenting with smart glasses and such? To anyone in the 1970's, this would seem like Star Trek fiction, not a practical device.
Antithesis / Aged like Fine Wine: Nikola Tesla predicted smartphones and their usefulness in the 1920's.