The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

It just occurred to me while re-reading the opening of the novel 'The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy' that in most respects the website 'Wikipedia' is the Guide brought to Earth...

Here is the original description of the Guide;

"Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one — more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words Don't Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."

Seems to be an apt description of Wikipedia itself and of its use in our lives.

I don't know why I never made that connection before.

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