Because the Internet is so new, we still don't really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that's what we're used to. So people complain that there's a lot of rubbish online, or that it's dominated by Americans, or that you can't necessarily trust what you read on the Web.

Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it's still being invented; we're still trying to work out how it works. There's a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn't recognise. It's time for the machines to disappear. The computer's got to disappear into all of the things we use.

“There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.” 

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” 

“A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.” 

“You live and learn. At any rate, you live.” 

“This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” 

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.” 

“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!” 

“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.” 

“Life is wasted on the living.” 

“Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.” 

“Life... is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.” 

“If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.” 

“He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. "I will go mad!" he annouced.” 

Life is wasted on the living.

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” 

“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer”

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” 

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. 

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.” 

“The Guide says there is an art to flying", said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” 

“Don't Panic.” 

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” 

“Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?” 

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.” 

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.” 

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” 

“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.” 

“If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.” 

“What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer.” 

“It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.” 

“He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.” 

“One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious.” 

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.” 

“He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.” 

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport.” 

“If I ever meet myself,' said Zaphod, 'I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me.” 

“My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes.” 

“I don't accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me 'Well, you haven't been there, have you? You haven't seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid' - then I can't even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don't think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don't think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.” 

“Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.” 

“I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.” 

“The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.” 

“The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.” 

“The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.” 

“I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?” 

“Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means.” 

“My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first” 

“Ow! My brains!” 

“One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.”