Editing Douglas Adams (section)

==Personal beliefs and activism==

===Atheism and views on religion===
Adams described himself as a "radical [[atheist]]", adding "radical" for emphasis so he would not be asked if he meant agnostic. He told [[American Atheists]] that this conveyed the fact that he really meant it. He imagined a [[Anthropic principle|sentient puddle]] who wakes up one morning and thinks, "This is an interesting world I find myself in – an interesting hole I find myself in – fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!" to express his disbelief in the [[fine-tuned universe]] argument for God.<ref>{{Harvnb|Adams|1998}}.</ref>

He remained fascinated by religion because of its effect on human affairs. "I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I've thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing."<ref name=amath>{{cite journal |last=Silverman |first=Dave |title=Interview: Douglas Adams |journal=American Atheist |year=1998–1999 |volume=37 |issue=1 |url=http://www.atheists.org/Interview%3A__Douglas_Adams |access-date=16 August 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111218084109/http://www.atheists.org/interview:__douglas_adams |archive-date=18 December 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The evolutionary biologist and atheist [[Richard Dawkins]] invited Adams to participate in his 1991 [[Royal Institution Christmas Lectures]], where Dawkins calls Adams from the audience to read a passage from ''[[The Restaurant at the End of the Universe]]'' which satirises the absurdity of the thought that any one species would exist on Earth merely to serve as a meal to another species, such as humans.<ref>{{cite web |title=Ep4: The Ultraviolet Garden – Growing Up in the Universe – Richard Dawkins |url=https://richarddawkins.net/2009/02/ep4-the-ultraviolet-garden-growing-up-in-the-universe-richard-dawkins-2/ |website=richarddawkins.net |date=8 February 2009 |access-date=10 February 2022}}</ref> Dawkins also uses Adams's influence to exemplify arguments for non-belief in his 2006 book ''[[The God Delusion]]''. Dawkins dedicated the book to Adams, whom he jokingly called "possibly [my] only convert" to atheism<ref name="TheGuardian">{{cite news |url=http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/roundupstory/0,,1939704,00.html |title=Observer, ''The God Delusion'', 5&nbsp;November 2006 |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=5 November 2006 |access-date=1 June 2009 |location=London |first=Kim |last=Bunce}}</ref> and wrote on his death that "Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the [[mountain gorilla]] and the [[black rhino]] have lost a gallant defender."<ref name=Dawkins2001>{{cite news |last=Dawkins |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Dawkins |title=Lament for Douglas Adams |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/may/14/books.booksnews |access-date=29 December 2012 |newspaper=The Guardian |date=13 May 2001}}</ref>

===Environmental activism===
Adams was also an [[environmental activist]] who campaigned on behalf of [[endangered species]]. This activism included the production of the non-fiction radio series ''[[Last Chance to See]]'', in which he and naturalist [[Mark Carwardine]] visited rare species such as the [[kākāpō]] and [[baiji]], and the publication of a tie-in book of the same name. In 1992, this was made into a CD-ROM combination of [[audiobook]], [[e-book]] and picture slide show.

Adams and Mark Carwardine contributed the 'Meeting a Gorilla' passage from ''Last Chance to See'' to the book ''[[Great Ape Project|The Great Ape Project]]''.<ref>{{cite book | editor=Cavalieri, Paola| editor-link=Paola Cavalieri | editor-first2=Peter| editor-last2=Singer| editor2-link=Peter Singer | title=The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity | edition=U.S. Paperback | publisher=St. Martin's Griffin | year=1994 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/greatapeprojecte00cava/page/19 19–23] |isbn=0-312-11818-X | url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/greatapeprojecte00cava/page/19 }}</ref> This book, edited by [[Paola Cavalieri]] and [[Peter Singer]], launched a wider-scale project in 1993, which calls for the extension of moral equality to include all great apes, human and non-human.

In 1994, Adams participated in a climb of [[Mount Kilimanjaro]] while wearing a rhino suit for the British charity organisation [[Save the Rhino|Save the Rhino International]]. Puppeteer [[William Todd-Jones]], who had originally worn the suit in the London Marathon to raise money and bring awareness to the group, also participated in the climb wearing a rhino suit; Adams wore the suit while travelling to the mountain before the climb began. About £100,000 was raised through that event, benefiting schools in Kenya and a black rhinoceros preservation programme in [[Tanzania]]. Adams was also an active supporter of the [[Dian Fossey]] Gorilla Fund.

Since 2003, [[Save the Rhino]] has held an annual Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture around the time of his birthday to raise money for environmental campaigns.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://lifednah2g2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/ninth-douglas-adams-memorial-lecture.html |title=The Ninth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture |date=12 January 2011 |publisher=Save the Rhino International |access-date=27 July 2011}}</ref>

===Technology and innovation===
Adams bought his first word processor in 1982, having considered one as early as 1979. His first purchase was a Nexu. In 1983, when he and Jane Belson went to Los Angeles, he bought a [[Digital Equipment Corporation|DEC]] [[Rainbow 100|Rainbow]]. Upon their return to England, Adams bought an [[Apricot Computers|Apricot]], then a [[BBC Micro]] and a [[Tandy 1000]].<ref name="Simpson_184-185">{{harvnb|Simpson|2003|pp=184–185}}.</ref> In ''Last Chance to See'', Adams mentions his [[Cambridge Z88]], which he had taken to [[Zaire]] on a quest to find the [[northern white rhinoceros]].<ref>{{cite book |author=Adams, Douglas and [[Mark Carwardine]] |title=Last Chance to See |edition=first U.S. Hardcover |publisher=[[Harmony Books]] |year=1991 |page=[https://archive.org/details/lastchancetosee0000adam/page/59 59] |isbn=0-517-58215-5 |url=https://archive.org/details/lastchancetosee0000adam/page/59}}</ref>

Adams's posthumously published work, ''[[The Salmon of Doubt]]'', features several articles by him on the subject of technology, including reprints of articles that originally ran in ''[[MacUser]]'', and in ''[[The Independent#The Independent on Sunday|The Independent on Sunday]]''. In these, Adams claims that one of the first computers he ever saw was a [[Commodore PET]], and that he had "adored" his Apple Macintosh ("or rather my family of however many Macintoshes it is that I've recklessly accumulated over the years") since he first saw one at Infocom's offices in Boston in 1984.<ref>{{cite book |author=Adams, Douglas |title=The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time |edition=first UK hardcover |publisher=Macmillan |year=2002 |pages=90–91 |isbn=0-333-76657-1}}</ref>

Adams was a Macintosh user from the time they first came out in 1984 until his death in 2001. He was the first person to buy a Mac in Europe, the second being [[Stephen Fry]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx6WPQkhUXI |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211030/gx6WPQkhUXI | archive-date=30 October 2021 |title=Craig Ferguson 23 February 2010B Late Late show Stephen Fry PT2 |publisher=YouTube |date=21 June 2010 |access-date=27 July 2011}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Adams was also an "[[AppleMasters|Apple Master]]", celebrities whom Apple made into spokespeople for its products (others included [[John Cleese]] and [[Gregory Hines]]). Adams's contributions included a rock video that he created using the first version of [[iMovie]] with footage featuring his daughter Polly. The video was available on Adams's [[.Mac]] homepage. Adams installed and started using the first release of [[macOS|Mac OS X]] in the weeks leading up to his death. His last post to his own forum was in praise of Mac OS X and the possibilities of its [[Cocoa (API)|Cocoa]] programming framework. He said it was "awesome...", which was also the last word he wrote on his site.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://douglasadams.com/cgi-bin/mboard/info/dnathread.cgi?2922,1 |title=Adams's final post on his forums at |publisher=Douglasadams.com |access-date=15 November 2022}}</ref>

Adams used email to correspond with [[Steve Meretzky]] in the early 1980s, during their collaboration on Infocom's version of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''.<ref name="Simpson_184-185"/> While living in New Mexico in 1993 he set up another e-mail address and began posting to his own [[USENET]] newsgroup, alt.fan.douglas-adams, and occasionally, when his computer was acting up, to the comp.sys.mac hierarchy.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.douglas-adams |title=Discussions – alt.fan.douglas-adams &#124; Google Groups |access-date=11 March 2013}}</ref> Challenges to the authenticity of his messages later led Adams to set up a message forum on his own website to avoid the issue. In 1996, Adams was a keynote speaker at the [[Microsoft]] [[Professional Developers Conference]] (PDC) where he described the personal computer as being a modelling device. The video of his keynote speech is archived on [[Channel 9 (discussion forum)|Channel 9]].<ref>{{cite web |last = Adams |first = Douglas |title = PDC 1996 Keynote with Douglas Adams |work=[[channel9.msdn.com]] |publisher=Channel 9 |date = 15 May 2001 |url=https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/events/pdc-1996/pdc-1996-keynote-douglas-adams |access-date =15 November 2022}}</ref>
Adams was also a keynote speaker for the April 2001 [[Academic conference|Embedded Systems Conference]] in San Francisco, one of the major technical conferences on [[embedded system]] engineering.<ref>{{cite web|last=Cassel |first=David |title=So long, Douglas Adams, and thanks for all the fun |work=[[Salon (website)|Salon]] |date=15 May 2001 |url=https://www.salon.com/2001/05/15/douglas_adams/ |access-date=15 November 2022}}</ref>

Although there is no explicit admission to this effect, it is not uncommon to find claims in the media that the various [[Deep Thought (chess computer)|Deep Thought]], [[Deep Blue (chess computer)|Deep Blue]], and [[Google DeepMind|DeepMind]] are named after the Deep Thought supercomputer imagined by Adams.<ref name="Deep#" /> Elon Musk was among the first funders of DeepMind, and has often admitted that Adams was fundamental to its formation. According to Musk, Adams is the "best philosopher ever",<ref name="Deep#" /> and ''Hitchhiker's'' "highlighted an important point which is that a lot of times the question is harder than the answer. And if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Transcript of Elon Musk Interview: Iron Man, Growing up in South Africa |url= https://www.freshdialogues.com/2013/02/07/transcript-of-elon-musk-interview-with-alison-van-diggelen-iron-man-growing-up-in-south-africa/ |website=freshdialogues.com |access-date=9 March 2025 }}</ref>