The Author Of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy' Perfectly Captured The 'Rules' About How We React To Technology

Touchstone PicturesZooey Deschanel meets Marvin the paranoid android in the movie version of "Hitchhiker's Guide."

Today, Douglas Adams fans are celebrating "Towel Day," the commemorative holiday created after his death and inspired by his science-fiction series that began with "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy." Adams fans will carry a towel with them all day, because the Hitchiker's Guide says that a towel is "the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have."

Adams died in 2001, but has the perfect, tongue-in-cheek quote about the way that people view technology that's still applicable today:

"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technology":

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 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things.

(Hat-tip to investor Chris Dixon, who recently posted the quote on his blog.)