What Does 42 Really Mean?
“What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?” Is the question Douglas Adams put forth in his novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The answer he provided to that question is the number 42, and that answer has mystified audiences for ages. The answer to the real question here is “What does 42 really mean?”
I’ve answered this question before in a different forum, but I’m going to see if I can give a slightly better and more eloquent version of that answer here. As well as answering the question about the basis from which Douglas Adams pulls that answer from. I can tell you for sure right now, that this answer doesn’t come from nowhere.
On What Basis Does Douglas Adams Say That 42 Is the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?
So, for context: “On what basis does Douglas Adams say that 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?” That basis is simple. Deep Thought, the character in the novel that provides the answer, is a supercomputer. Computers are designed to take a question, process it, then put forward an answer to that question. And, just like every living person and computer in the world, Deep Thought gives that answer in a language it understands, even if that language is something that the people asking the question didn’t think of when trying to interpret the answer.
Now, what language does a computer speak? It’s not English, Chinese, French, Spanish, Latin, or any language that humans typically consider to be language. A computer speaks a programming language. Python, ASCII, Java Script, these are just a few of the programming languages in the world today. But what relevance does that have? Simple, Douglas Adams was a computer programmer.
That’s right. Douglas Adams was a computer programmer, and the language du jour when Adams was working in computer programming was ASCII. Why is that important? Because the answer Deep Thought gives is based in the ASCII computer programming language. Deep Thought answers the question in ASCII.
That brings us to the question:
What Does 42 Mean in ASCII?
In ASCII 42 is the numerical value which represents a specific character on a keyboard. That character is an asterisk. That’s right. The * on your keyboard is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything… and I can prove it, because we still haven’t talked about what * actually means in the ASCII programming language.
The asterisk in the ASCII programming language is a stand in character. It’s a variable. It’s a character that is simply a placeholder until the end user deletes it and enters in the appropriate value for whatever equation they’re working on.
What does that mean for 42 though? If 42 is a variable, how does that answer the question of life, the universe, and everything?
That answer is both extremely simple and extremely complex all at the same time. Saying that 42 is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is just a way of saying life is variable.
Life Is Variable
Life is variable. The meaning of life is a placeholder, it is just a character used to fill in the space in an equation until the end user deletes it to generate the appropriate value for the equation they’re working on. Here’s the kicker though. In life, YOU are the end user. That’s right, YOU are the person who gives YOUR life meaning.
Life is variable. Life is what you make of it.
I’m going to make my life mean something. I’m going to make it about those things that are most important to me. What are you going to make your life mean?