Adams wasn't even going for that. The fact the Guide is electronic and you can read it is not all that important (though it does avoid needing "several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in").
Its nearest modern analogue is wikis, especially Wikipedia, not ebooks.
(and to me, ebooks are regular books, fiction and non-fiction, formatted so they can be reflowed on an ebook reader. Typically only one author, flow linearly and are rarely updated)
The Guide...
* is updated regularly and automatically (over the Sub-Etha net)
* can be used by field researchers to directly send updates back to their editors
* is focused on what the average traveller wants to know, rather than being academic, e.g. its entry on alcohol tells you the best drink in existence, where to get it, etc.
* it's edited by "any passing stranger who happened to wander into the empty offices of an afternoon and saw something worth doing"
It's not entirely predicting Wikipedia, as it's still rooted in Adams' understanding of 1970s publishing corporations, where contributors must go through editors, but it's close to Wikipedia's spirit
That and the near-religious worship of said new form, which Adams honed to its pinnacle as the Electric Monk.
(Which is, incidentally, the host name I use for one of my AI inference endpoints…)
9d•8mo ago
That's.... oddly specific