The True Meaning of 42

13. The true meaning of 42 In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the supercomputer Deep Thought is built by a race of hyper-intelligent alien beings to determine the answer to “life, the universe, and everything.” Deep Thought determines that the answer is, somewhat anticlimactically, “42.” It sounds like a joke, but is there more to this answer? Douglas Adams was an unabashed computer nerd and knew a heck of a lot about programming language and coding. In programming, an asterisk is commonly used to translate as “whatever you want it to be”. In ASCII language, the most basic computer software, “42” is the designation for an asterisk. A computer, Deep Thought, was asked what the true meaning of life was. It answered as a computer would. 42 = “anything you want it to be.” Genius.

The image presents a numbered explanatory passage about the meaning of 42 in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It explains that 42 corresponds to an asterisk in ASCII and therefore can mean “whatever you want it to be,” turning the famous absurd answer into a programming joke. It is shared as a humorous reference for clever, nerdy, or unexpectedly philosophical situations.

• @profunctor_io / 1488 2018-11-22