The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy; chapters 1-5

[giselle]

How much is it they just know their stuff and so it seems like prescience and how much of it is that those images they leave us with are so compelling that the next generation of designers still remembers the descriptions and so such things become how we create our material world. Take the flip phone and the Star Trek communicator, for example.

I think you are onto something. Perhaps its like a back and forth over time, flipping between looking back for knowledge and ideas and looking forward in a prescient way which actually determines the course of events, the development of technology and other stuff. When I read Adams I get the sense that he seems himself in this way, at his particular juncture of time and place as an author but also as a futurist. I had a flip phone for a while and then moved 'up' to a smart phone but, alas, it is not a flip phone and although I like texting features and a few other things, and I miss my flip phone. I really got a kick out of flipping it open, watched too much star trek I guess.