Share and enjoy

The draft text for some course materials I was producing included a section called "Share and enjoy". In a meeting for last minute editorial revisions, one of my colleagues proposed that the section heading should be changed because "Share and enjoy" was naff. I observed that a stronger reason for changing it was its use in Douglas Adams' 'Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. The blank faces around me suggested that this media reference wasn't as well-known as I'd thought, so it's worth exposition here.

It comes from the second series - Fit the Ninth, to be precise - which wasn't represented in the TV series or the film, which is probably why it's not as familiar as, for example, Vogon poetry, or Life, the Universe and Everything.

NARRATOR: 'Share and Enjoy' is, of course, the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to show a consistent profit in recent years.

The motto stands - or stood - in three mile high illuminated letters near the complaints department spaceport on Eadrax - 'Share and Enjoy'.

Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the underground offices of many talented young complaints executives - now deceased. The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read 'Go stick your head in a pig' and are no longer illuminated except at times of special celebration.

Once again, I'm astounded at the prescience of Douglas Adams. At a time when most commentators were forecasting either techno-utopia or techno-dystopia, he foresaw technology being used in the service of corporate blah, of marketing and PR. This is a universe in which the lifts not only welcome you but refer you to other buildings containing lifts produced by the same manufacturer, where the shoe companies use techno-military hardware to enforce sales of their unsatisfactory footware, and where the drinks machines threateningly command you, as they dispense their disgusting liquids, to "enjoy your drink". Yes, he saw the future all right.

Reference
Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts (London and Sydney: Pan Books, 1985), pp 176-77.