9 Times The Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy Accurately Predicted The Future
3. Wikipedia
The Hitchhikers' Guide is essentially a collection of entries from a number of contributors in an attempt to cover as wide a variety of topics as possible and "most of the actual work got done by any passing stranger who happened to wander into the empty offices of an afternoon and saw something worth doing." Unfortunately, because of this, the quality and accuracy of its entries tend to vary wildly, most of them ending up as almost, if not entirely, useless.
Sound familiar? Well, we're looking at you, Wikipedia. Noble and, for the most part, extremely helpful for resolving bets at the pub, the similarities between the likes of Wikipedia and the Guide are almost spooky. In fact, Douglas Adams himself set up a precursor to the website himself in 1999 called h2g2 designed for pretty much the exact same function.
Adams himself was bemused by the whole thing, saying that he has been "joking" when he had suggested the idea for the Guide all those years ago. He simply asserts that he "inadvertently, had a terribly good idea. I really didn't foresee the internet. But then, neither did the computer industry". Now there's a humble brag if ever we heard one.