Scientists are now talking about tiny computers a billion times faster than our present ones, computers which can be incorporated into almost anything and everything around us. Adams describes the present ones as 'fridge-sized' objects, and feels we are still far too aware of computers and what we do or don't like about them. Technology', as the visionary Bran Ferren has pointed out, 'is something that doesn't work yet'. When it's working, Douglas Adams is convinced that we can relax and forget about it. If all this sounds a bit disconcerting and you are feeling left behind by the speed of change, then Adams uses a skiing analogy to help give you confidence.
Life is always in motion.
We can either resist the pull of that motion and try painfully to edge our way along the edge, or lean out from the slope and just go for it. The world is changing very fast, but the truth is that life has always changed. In the past we've just thought of change as a mild irritant. Now it's so fast we'll have to think of it differently. If Adams's vision of the future proves accurate, then the information superhighway developed so far may prove to have only been the nursery slope.