The Google Calculator Easter Egg, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, & The Answer To Life (AKA “42″)
Geek Anthropology 101
As our society becomes more and more a technocracy, understanding the customs of and being able to communicate with those whose lives are defined by their applied science skills (i.e., the geeks) becomes, similarly, more important. Today’s post is a Geek Anthropology 101 tutorial covering the concept of Virtual Easter Eggs, operation of the Google Calculator Tool, and an introduction to a primary volume of geek canonical literature, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, all tied together with a narrative involving a cultural creation myth.
Oh, and as a lagniappe, this didactic includes the initial answer to life, the universe and everything .
So, let’s get started.
Virtual Easter Eggs
A virtual Easter egg1 is a hidden message or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, video game, or, in this case, a software program. As the Wikipedia article points out, “In computer programming, the underlying motivation is probably to put an individual, almost artistic touch on an intellectual product which is by its nature standardized and functional, … It is analogous to signature motifs such as Diego Rivera including himself in his murals or Alfred Hitchcock including himself in the opening scenes of his movies.”
Examples follow:
The virtual Easter Egg in Excel 97 activates a version of Flight Simulator.
The Word 97 Easter Egg is a pinball game.
To find an Easter Egg that is less technically impressive but touching — in a geeky, mercantile way — go to Amazon.com, click on “Directory of All Stores” near the bottom, scroll down to bottom of the page, Under the hyphen of “1996-2005″ of the copyright notice is an invisible link (just move the cursor in this area until it shifts from an arrow to a finger, then click) which leads to a farewell, maintained in perpetuity, from the founder, Jeff Bezos, to David Risher, a retired employee.
The Google Calculator
The Google Calculator is built into the normal Google search page. If one enters math queries of this sort,
77 - 14 * 19 -2 + 323 / sqrt64
the Google result displays the solution:
77 - (14 * 19) - 2 + (323 / sqrt(64)) = -150.6250
Because Google Calculator also handles conversions, one can also enter queries such as
55 mph*2 hr in feet
and be rewarded with the solution:
(55 mph) * 2 hr = 580,800 feet
The Google Calculator uses standard math notations and can be used intuitively to good effect, but more information can be found at Google Calculator Instructions.
The Google Calculator Easter Egg & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
If one enters into Google this query,
answer to life, the universe and everything
the Google Calculator provides the answer, “42″
While that is, no doubt, 
a useful bit of information to have on hand, it takes on extra meaning once one understands that “42″ is a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the science fiction series by Douglas Adams, which is as an essential element of the sacred books of geekdom — and the source of multiple allusions in the speech and writing of the tribe being studied.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s story of creation describes how a race of beings of the hyper-intelligent sort constructed Deep Thought, a computer that later proves to be the second greatest computer in all of time and space, to determine the [ahem] Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Seven and a half million years later, Deep Thought spits out the answer:
The kicker, of course, lies in what happens next:
“Forty-two!” yelled Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?”
“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”
And as the plot continues, Deep Thought builds an even greater, and much larger, computer to discover what the question is. That computer was called Earth, and, because of its size, was to be frequently misidentified as a planet.
Footnotes
- The term, Easter Egg, is derived from the traditional Easter egg hunt. ~back~
