The Salmon of Doubt

by Douglas Adams

  Then, as our ability to manipulate numbers with these machines became more sophisticated, we wondered what might happen if we made the numbers stand for something else, like for instance the letters of the alphabet.

  Bingo! An extraordinary, world-changing breakthrough! We realised we had been myopically shortsighted to think this thing was just an adding machine. It was something far more exciting. It was a typewriter!

  So we began to develop it as a super typewriter. With a long and increasingly incomprehensible feature list. Users of Microsoft Word will know what I’m talking about.

  The next breakthrough came when we started to make these numbers, which were now flying round inside these machines at insane speeds, stand for the picture elements of a graphic display. Pixels.

  Aha! we thought. This machine turns out to be much more exciting even than a typewriter. It’s a television! With a typewriter stuck in front of it!

  And now we have the World Wide Web (the only thing I know of whose shortened form—www—takes three times longer to say than what it’s short for) and we have yet another exciting new model. It’s a brochure. A huge, all-singing, all-dancing, hopping, beeping, flash-ridden brochure.

  Of course, the computer isn’t any of these things. These are all things we were previously familiar with from the real world, which we have modelled in the computer so that we can use the damn thing.

  Which should tell us something interesting.

  The computer is actually a modelling device.

  Once we see that, we ought to realise that we can model anything in it. Not just things we are used to doing in the real world, but the things the real world actually prevents us from doing.

  What does a brochure prevent us from doing?

  Well, first of all its job is to persuade people to buy what you have to sell, and do it by being as glossy and seductive as possible and only telling people what you want them to know. You can’t interrogate a brochure. Most corporate websites are like that. Take BMW, for instance. Its Web site is gorgeous and whizzy and it won’t answer your questions. It won’t let you find out what other people’s experience of owning BMWs is like, what shortcomings any particular model might or might not have, how reliable they are, what they cost to run, what they’re like in the wet, or anything like that. In other words, anything you might actually want to know. You can e-mail them, but your question or their answer—or anybody else’s answer—will not appear on the site. Of course, there are plenty of Web sites where people do share exactly that kind of information, and they’re only a few clicks away, but you won’t find a word about them on BMW’s site. In fact, if you want proper, grown-up information about BMWs, the last place you’ll find it is at www.bmw.com. It’s a brochure.

  Same with British Airways. It’ll tell you anything you like about British Airways flights except who else is flying those routes. So if you want to see what the choice is, you go instead to one of the scores of other sites that will tell you. Which is bad news for British Airways because they never get to find out what you were actually looking for, or how what they were offering stacked up against the competition. And because that is very valuable information, they have to send out teams of people with clipboards to try to find out, despite the fact that everybody lies to people with clipboards.

  The people who have got this spectacularly right so far are the guys at Amazon. You go to their site because it’s awash with shared information. The more information there is, the more people go there, and the more people go there, the more information they generate, and the more books Amazon sells. Of course, they are not afraid of open debate because, unlike BMW, they are not responsible for the product they sell. It will take BMW and British Airways a long time and a big deep breath to realise that they are part of the community they sell to.

  But even Amazon has only got part of the picture. Like real-world shops, they can only record the sales they actually make. What about the sales they don’t make and don’t know that they haven’t made because they haven’t made them? I went on to Amazon the other day because I wanted to order the 1968 Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet on DVD. Turns out it doesn’t exist. I could buy it on VHS, but I don’t want it on VHS. So the whole transaction was null. There was no way of recording that I came in looking to buy something, and that the something I wanted to buy wasn’t there. I only got to select (or not select) from what happened to be available, I didn’t get to be able to say what I actually wanted. So I wrote to them about it and, guess what, now you can. They’re very smart like that. They are now able to supply the studios with information about what there is actually demand for out there. And on the basis of another—not entirely disinterested—suggestion of mine, they are going to start a running poll on which books people would most like to see turned into movies. This is information that no one has ever been able to collect before.

  But let us take this one stage further. How often have you looked through a brochure or a catalogue and thought, “I wish somebody would write a book about . . .” or “If only somebody made a bicycle with a . . .” Or “Why doesn’t somebody make a screwdriver that . . .” or “Why don’t they make that in blue?” A brochure can’t answer you, but the Web can.

  What is the thing you’d really love to have, if only someone had the sense to make one? Suggestions, please, to www.h2g2.com.

  —The Independent on Sunday,

  NOVEMBER 1999

  * * *

  I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

  1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

  2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

  3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

  Interview, American Atheists

  AMERICAN ATHEISTS: Mr. Adams, you have been described as a “radical Atheist.” Is this accurate?

  DNA: Yes. I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “Atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘Agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god—in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one. It’s easier to say that I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously. It’s funny how many people are genuinely surprised to hear a view expressed so strongly. In England we seem to have drifted from vague, wishy-washy Anglicanism to vague, wishy-washy Agnosticism—both of which I think betoken a desire not to have to think about things too much.

  People will then often say, “But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?” This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)

  Other people will ask how I can possibly claim to know. Isn’t belief-that-there-is-not-a-god as irrational, arrogant, etc., as belief-that-there-is-a-god? To which I say no for several reasons. First of all I do not believe-that-there-is-not-a-god. I don’t see what belief has got to do with it. I believe or don’t believe my four-year-old daughter when she tells me that she didn’t make that mess on the floor. I believe in justice and fair play (though I don’t know exactly how we achieve them, other than by continually trying against all possible odds of success). I also believe that England should enter the European Monetary Union. I am not remotely enough of an economist to argue the issue vigorously with someone who is, but what little I do know, reinf
orced with a hefty dollop of gut feeling, strongly suggests to me that it’s the right course. I could very easily turn out to be wrong, and I know that. These seem to me to be legitimate uses for the word believe. As a carapace for the protection of irrational notions from legitimate questions, however, I think that the word has a lot of mischief to answer for. So, I do not believe-that-there-is-no-god. I am, however, convinced that there is no god, which is a totally different stance and takes me on to my second reason.

  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.

  AMERICAN ATHEISTS: How long have you been a nonbeliever, and what brought you to that realization?

  DNA: Well, it’s a rather corny story. As a teenager I was a committed Christian. It was in my background. I used to work for the school chapel, in fact. Then one day when I was about eighteen I was walking down the street when I heard a street evangelist and, dutifully, stopped to listen. As I listened it began to be borne in on me that he was talking complete nonsense, and that I had better have a bit of a think about it.

  I’ve put that a bit glibly. When I say I realized he was talking nonsense, what I mean is this. In the years I’d spent learning history, physics, Latin, math, I’d learnt (the hard way) something about standards of argument, standards of proof, standards of logic, etc. In fact we had just been learning how to spot the different types of logical fallacy, and it suddenly became apparent to me that these standards simply didn’t seem to apply in religious matters. In religious education we were asked to listen respectfully to arguments that, if they had been put forward in support of a view of, say, why the Corn Laws came to be abolished when they were, would have been laughed at as silly and childish and—in terms of logic and proof—just plain wrong. Why was this?

  Well, in history, even though the understanding of events, of cause and effect, is a matter of interpretation, and even though interpretation is in many ways a matter of opinion, nevertheless those opinions and interpretations are honed to within an inch of their lives in the withering crossfire of argument and counterargument, and those that are still standing are then subjected to a whole new round of challenges of fact and logic from the next generation of historians—and so on. All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated, and well-supported in logic and argument than others.

  So I was already familiar with and (I’m afraid) accepting of, the view that you couldn’t apply the logic of physics to religion, that they were dealing with different types of “truth.” (I now think this is baloney, but to continue . . .) What astonished me, however, was the realization that the arguments in favor of religious ideas were so feeble and silly next to the robust arguments of something as interpretive and opinionated as history. In fact they were embarrassingly childish. They were never subject to the kind of outright challenge which was the normal stock in trade of any other area of intellectual endeavor whatsoever. Why not? Because they wouldn’t stand up to it. So I became an Agnostic. And I thought and thought and thought. But I just did not have enough to go on, so I didn’t really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn’t know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe, and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins’s books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

  AMERICAN ATHEISTS: You allude to your Atheism in your speech to your fans (“. . . that was one of the few times I actually believed in god”). Is your Atheism common knowledge among your fans, friends, and coworkers? Are many people in your circle of friends and co-workers Atheists as well?

  DNA: This is a slightly puzzling question to me, and I think there is a cultural difference involved. In England there is no big deal about being an Atheist. There’s just a slight twinge of discomfort about people strongly expressing a particular point of view when maybe a detached wishy-washiness might be felt to be more appropriate—hence a preference for Agnosticism over Atheism. And making the move from Agnosticism to Atheism takes, I think, much more commitment to intellectual effort than most people are ready to put in. But there’s no big deal about it. A number of the people I know and meet are scientists, and in those circles Atheism is the norm. I would guess that most people I know otherwise are Agnostics, and quite a few are Atheists. If I was to try and look amongst my friends, family, and colleagues for people who believed there was a god, I’d probably be looking amongst the older and (to be perfectly frank) less well-educated ones. There are one or two exceptions. (I nearly put, by habit, “honorable exceptions,” but I don’t really think that.)

  AMERICAN ATHEISTS: How often have fans, friends, or co-workers tried to “save” you from Atheism?

  DNA: Absolutely never. We just don’t have that kind of fundamentalism in England. Well, maybe that’s not absolutely true. But (and I’m going to be horribly arrogant here) I guess I just tend not to come across such people, just as I tend not to come across people who watch daytime soaps or read the National Enquirer. And how do you usually respond? I wouldn’t bother.

  AMERICAN ATHEISTS: Have you faced any obstacles in your professional life because of your Atheism (bigotry against Atheists), and how did you handle it? How often does this happen?

  DNA: Not even remotely. It’s an inconceivable idea.

  AMERICAN ATHEISTS: There are quite a few lighthearted references to god and religion in your books (“. . . two thousand years after some guy got nailed to a tree”). How has your Atheism influenced your writing? Where (in which characters or situations) are your personal religious thoughts most accurately reflected?

  DNA: I am fascinated by religion. (That’s a completely different thing from believing in it!) It has had such an incalculably huge effect on human affairs. What is it? What does it represent? Why have we invented it? How does it keep going? What will become of it? I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I’ve thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing.

  AMERICAN ATHEISTS: What message would you like to send to your Atheist fans?

  DNA: Hello! How are you?

  From The American Atheist 37, No. 1 (interview conducted by David Silverman)

  * * *

  What are the benefits of speaking to your fans via e-mail?

  It’s quicker, easier, and involves less licking.

  Predicting the Future

  Trying to predict the future is a mug’s game. But increasingly it’s a game we all have to play because the world is changing so fast and we need to have some sort of idea of what the future’s actually going to be like because we are going to have to live there, probably next week
.

  Oddly, the industry that is the primary engine of this incredible pace of change—the computer industry—turns out to be rather bad at predicting the future itself. There are two things in particular that it failed to foresee: one was the coming of the Internet, which, in an astonishingly short time, has become what the computer industry is now all about; the other was the fact that the century would end.

  So, as we stand on the brink of a new millennium, peering up at the shiny cliff face of change that confronts us, like Kubrick’s apes gibbering in front of the great black monolith, how can we possibly hope to guess what’s to come? Molecular computers, quantum computers—what can we dare to say about them? We were wrong about trains, we were wrong about planes, we were wrong about radio, we were wrong about phones, we were wrong about . . . well, for a voluminous list of the things we have been wrong about, you could do worse than dig out a copy of a book called The Experts Speak by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky.

  It’s a compendium of authoritative predictions made in the past that turned out to be wonderfully wrong, usually almost immediately. You know the kind of thing. Irving Fisher, professor of economics at Yale University, said on October 17, 1929, that “stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” Then there was the Decca record executive who said of the Beatles in 1962, “We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out,” and so on. Ah, here’s another one: “Bill Clinton will lose to any Republican who doesn’t drool on stage,” said The Wall Street Journal, in 1995. It’s a very fat book you can read happily in the loo for hours.

  The odd thing is that we don’t get any better at it. We smile indulgently when we hear that Lord Kelvin said in 1897, “Radio has no future.” But it’s more surprising to discover that Ken Olsen, the president of the Digital Equipment Corporation, said in 1977, “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.” Even Bill Gates, who specifically set out to prove him completely and utterly wrong, famously said that he couldn’t conceive of anybody needing more than 640k of memory in their computers. Try running Word in even twenty times that.