Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
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[[Image:Encyclopaedia Galactica SCC(MD).jpg|thumb|right|270px|[[Encyclopedia Galactica]]: the inept Sirius Cybernetics Corporation [[Marketing board|Marketing Division]]. (The top left portrait depicts [[Douglas Adams]].)]]
The '''Sirius Cybernetics Corporation''' is a [[List of fictional companies|fictional company]] from [[Douglas Adams]]' ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]''.
==The Corporation==
In the series, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is responsible for the design and creation of a wide range of [[robot]]s and labour-saving devices, such as [[elevator|lift]]s, [[door#Types of doors|automatic doors]], [[Ventilation (architecture)|ventilation system]]s, the infamous [[Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser]], and [[Watch#Digital watches|digital watches]] (substituted by [[polyphonic ringtone]]s, [[Handheld PC|palmtops]] and [[Operating system|computer operating systems]] in the [[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary to Quintessential Phases|2005 radio series]]).
Despite the fact that the "fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws" of everything they produce, the [[marketing]]-driven company will still exist until a revolution in the next thousand years. When a person asks for a drink from the [[Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser]], the dispenser probes the customer's taste sensors and pleasure receptors of the brain. Despite its sophisticated artificial intelligence, it always dispenses the same drink: a concoction that tastes "[[Notable phrases from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy#Not entirely unlike|almost, but not quite, entirely unlike]] [[tea]]".
==Genuine People Personalities==
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The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation invented a concept called ''Genuine People Personalities'' ("GPP") which imbue their products with intelligence and emotion. Thus not only do doors open and close, but they thank their users for using them, or sigh with the satisfaction of a job well done. Other examples of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's record with sentient technology include an armada of neurotic elevators, hyperactive ships' computers and perhaps most famously of all, [[Marvin the Paranoid Android]]. Marvin is a [[prototype]] for the GPP feature, and his depression and "terrible pain in all the [[diode]]s down his left side" are due to unresolved flaws in his programming. Ironically, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "your plastic pal who's fun to be with".
The [[Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy]] notes that a version of the '''Encyclopaedia Galactica''' that "had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future" defined the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came," with "a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent."
The only profitable division of the company is its Complaints division, which, according to the series, takes up all of the major landmasses on the first three planets in the Sirius [[Tau]] system. The theme song for the Complaints division is [[Notable phrases from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy#Share and Enjoy|Share and Enjoy]], and has since become the theme apparent for the company as a whole. The main office building and headquarters for the company was originally built to represent this motto, but due to bad architecture it sank halfway into the ground, killing many talented young complaints associates. The downside to this is that the building now read, in the dialect of the planet it was on, "Go Stick Your Head in a Pig."
==By-products of Designer People==
In addition, during the backstory ''[[Young Zaphod Plays it Safe]]'', the corporation designed and produced synthetic personalities to order, but they turned out to be the "By-products of Designer People - amalgams of characteristics which simply could not co-exist in naturally occurring life forms". Some of these were dangerous as they did not alarm people to their dangerousness. The starship ''Billion Year Bunker'' contained three of these in the hold, on their way to being blasted out of the universe - but one had escaped to Earth, "the man babbling gently about a shining [[city on a hill]]" (an open reference to [[Ronald Reagan]]).
== External links ==
* [http://hhgproject.org/entries/shareandenjoy.html "Share and Enjoy" lyrics]
* [http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/10/largest-fictional-companies-oped-books-fict1507-cx_mn_de_1211company_slide_4.html?thisSpeed=30000 Forbes 25 fictional companies Rich List (Number 3)]
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[[Category:Fictional companies]]
[[Category:Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]
[[it:Società Cibernetica Sirio]]
[[fi:Luettelo Linnunrata-kirjasarjan käsitteistä]]
[[ru:Sirius Cybernetics Corporation]]