Ideas42 Is Born

"Never again," cried the man, "never again will we wake up in the morning and think: Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work? For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe and Everything!"

"Tell us!"

"Alright," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question..."

"Yes...!"

"Of Life, the Universe and Everything..." said Deep Thought.

"Yes...!"

"Is." said Deep Thought, and paused.

"Yes...!"

"Is."

"Yes...!!!...?"

"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

"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."

This is the origin of 42, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a novel by Douglas Adams. Deep Thought is the most brilliant computer, tasked with finding what the meaning of life is; Loonquawl is a mouse who presides over the Day of the Answer.

Inspired by the idea of asking the right questions, Harvard University and the IFC today established Ideas42, a new think-tank on development issues. It is housed at the institute for quantitative social studies at Harvard.

More to come on what Ideas42 will be doing...