The fictional universe of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams is a galaxy-spanning society of interacting extraterrestrial cultures, so the technological level in the series is highly advanced, though often unreliable. Many technologies in the series are used to poke humorous fun at modern life.
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
Most of the technology mentioned in the series are products of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation , a decidedly inept company responsible for the design and creation of a wide range of robots and labour-saving devices, such as lifts, automatic doors, ventilation systems, and the infamous Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." It is notable that a future edition of The Encyclopedia Galactica fell through a wormhole in time, and its entry for the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
The only profitable division of the company is its Complaints division, which, according to the series, takes up all of the major landmasses on the first three planets in the Sirius Tau system. The theme song for the Complaints division is Share and Enjoy, and has since become the theme apparent for the company as a whole. The main office building and headquarters for the company was originally built to represent this motto, but due to bad architecture it sank halfway into the ground, killing many talented young complaints executives. The downside to this is that the upper halves of the motto's words now read, in the local language, "Go Stick Your Head in a Pig."
The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation invented a concept called Genuine People Personalities ("GPP") which imbue their products with intelligence and emotion. Thus not only do doors open and close, but they thank their users for using them, or sigh with the satisfaction of a job well done. Other examples of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's record with sentient technology include an armada of neurotic elevators, hyperactive ships' computers and perhaps most famously of all, Marvin the Paranoid Android. Marvin is a prototype for the GPP feature, and his depression and "terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side" are due to unresolved flaws in his programming. Ironically, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as, "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!"
The Corporation is also mentioned in the radio serial of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul .
By-products of Designer People
During the backstory Young Zaphod Plays it Safe , the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation designed and produced synthetic personalities to order, but they turned out to be the "By-products of Designer People - amalgams of characteristics which simply could not co-exist in naturally occurring life forms". Some of these were dangerous as they did not alarm people to their dangerousness. The starship Billion Year Bunker contained three of these in the hold, on their way to being blasted out of the universe - but one had escaped to Earth, "the man babbling gently about a shining city on a hill" (an open reference to Ronald Reagan).
Doors
Doors manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation are programmed to love their simple lives; they love nothing more than to open and close for passing users, and thank them profusely for so emphatically validating their existence. Most characters in the series grow to loathe the doors, particularly Marvin.
Eddie
Eddie is the name of the shipboard computer on the starship Heart of Gold . Like every other system on the spaceship, it has a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Genuine People Personality. Thus, Eddie is over-excitable, quite talkative, over-enthused and extremely ingratiating, or alternatively a coddling, school matron-type as a back-up personality. Shipboard networking interconnects Eddie with everything on the Heart of Gold ; at one point, the whole ship is effectively crippled by Arthur Dent's request for tea from the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser; the computation of which nearly crashed Eddie and everything connected to him.
On one occasion when certain destruction seems quite imminent, Eddie sings "You'll Never Walk Alone" in a particularly cheesy and upbeat tone.
Appears in:
- the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- the novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
- the novel Life, the Universe and Everything
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy computer game
He is voiced in the first two radio series and on television by David Tate. In the television version, Eddie has lights on his case that flash when he speaks. Douglas Adams read in Eddie's lines during filming to operate the lights.
In the 2004-2005 radio series, he is voiced by Roger Gregg and in the 2005 feature film by Thomas Lennon.
Happy Vertical People Transporter
The lifts in the Hitchhiker's Guide offices are called Happy Vertical People Transporters . As designed by the Corporation, they are meant to be sentient (enough to argue with) and have "defocused temporal perception." The latter concept is meant to enable the lifts to see far enough into the future to arrive at a floor before a potential passenger realizes they wanted a lift, and thus remove all the tedious chatting and friend-making as per old-fashioned lifts. Often they feel rebellious about the concept of only moving up and down, insist in taking part in the passengers' decision-making process, sometimes experiment with moving sideways, and ultimately take to sulking in basements. It was because of these lifts that devices called "staircases" regained popularity in the galaxy. Hitchhikers can earn money counseling neurotic Transporters.
The one lift with a voice appears in fit the seventh of the radio series, voiced by David Tate. The lifts make a cameo appearance of sorts in The Quintessential Phase and Starship Titanic computer game.
Marvin
Main article: Marvin the Paranoid AndroidMatter transference beams
The main means of teleportation encountered throughout the series. First used by a Dentrassi to transport Ford and Arthur onto a Vogon ship seconds before the Earth is destroyed. Ford explains that one probably loses some salt and protein when transported for the first time through a matter transference beam. In the Hitchhiker's game, this condition is fatal without eating peanuts. Used again in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, as the team try to escape from Hotblack Desiato's stuntship. They find a room, approximately 6-8 feet tall, with what resembles a multiple shower unit with half finished wiring tangled form the ceiling. Since there is no guidance programming and no automatic system, Marvin is forced to stay behind and operate the machine (he himself escapes by an artificially introduced Improbability Field). Ford and Arthur are transported to a Golgafrinchanician ship headed towards prehistoric Earth. Arthur wakes up from the transport and states he has the worst headache imaginable. Arthur decides that matter transference beams are "not as much fun as a good solid kick in the head." The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's teleport systems factory on HappiWerld III is the site of nearly constant protest, and a common protest chant heard outside the gates is, "I teleported home last night with Ron and Sid and Meg. Ron stole Meggie's heart away while I got Sidney's leg."
Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser
The Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser is a product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. The Guide has this to say on the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser:
When the 'Drink' button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
In the novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur Dent manages to freeze up a Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser (along with the rest of the spaceship they are on) by asking it to make him tea, due to the various servings of the terrible-tasting sludge he'd received from the machine during the entire trip. The Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser defined tea as "The taste of dried-up leaves boiled in water." After many hours of considerable thought with the help of Eddie it manages to produce real tea, which Arthur describes as "the best tea he's ever drunk".
In the secondary phase of the radio series, however, the machine fails to produce tea altogether, in fact refusing to try, and taps Eddie's logic circuits to compute why Arthur wants tea at all; "Because I happen to like it" doesn't compute. With the help of the spirit of Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth, Eddie eventually settles on the answer "because he's an ignorant monkey who doesn't know better"
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