To anyone familiar with Douglas Adams’ remarkable novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number “42” is significant. In the novel, a race of super-beings creates the greatest computer in the universe, aptly name “Deep Thought,” to answer the age-old question: the meaning of life, the universe and everything. After mulling over the question for 7-½ million years, the computer responded “42”.

Deep Thought had access to a universe of knowledge. It represented the pinnacle of computer engineering, a machine sitting at the very top of the information value chain, capable of turning knowledge into wisdom. Although Deep Thought’s response to the ultimate question was anticlimactic, to say the least, the concept of computers as sources of knowledge, intelligence and wisdom was prophetic considering the book was published in 1979.