When meeting new clients or networking with other business owners and freelancers, the question of what our name means comes up often. We admit, it is a bit obtuse and references a geeky book that not everyone has read, so today we’ll explain our name a bit and hopefully help alleviate some of the confusion around it.

The Fourth Estate

One of our main goals here at The 42nd Estate is to empower individuals and businesses to become their own media machine. In the past, we all had to rely on newspapers, magazines, television, radio and other indirect forms of communication to market our brands. Today, with blogs and social media we can all become our own marketing force.

The fourth estate is a term used to reference the press. The use of estates began as a form of castes, a way to divide up society into various partitions. The first estate was the clergy, the second estate was nobility and the third estate was the commoners, or the proletariat.

The earliest recorded use of the term the fourth estate came in Thomas Carlyle’s book, On Heroes and Hero Worship in which he quoted a British politician, Thomas Burke, as saying:

there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.

The quote was meant to show that the media was becoming more powerful than all the other estates. As the years have passed we’ve seen the media grow even more powerful than they were in the 19th century when the term came into existence. Today, the media is arguably the most important and powerful force in our society. Though they set no laws, we rely on them to report to the rest of society on what lawmakers are doing and act as a check and balance of our political system. Without an active media and an involved citizenry, our government has no reigns and no limits.

42 is the answer

The number 42 has entered geek folklore ever since being used by Douglas Adams in his series of books entitled The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In the first book in the series a planet of super intelligent beings decide to build a supercomputer to discover the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. The supercomputer, aptly called Deep Thought, spends the next 7.5 million years crunching the data. Finally, Deep Thought announces it has analyzed all the data and computed the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything [link is to this scene from the film version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy].

In a grand ceremony before most of the planet’s population, Deep Thought is asked by the planet’s most respected scientists what is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?

Rather than answering the question myself, let’s Google the term, answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

After running that query, the Google calculator returns the answer:

The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything

Of course, it’s 42! It is an example of the dry but witty humor that is built into nearly every page of Douglas Adams’ science fiction comedy. It’s a great read and to this day remains the only book that’s ever made me literally laugh out loud.

When brainstorming ideas for our company name, all of us realized that our goal was to empower individuals and companies to become their own fourth estate. With blogs and social media the power to control your brand and market it effectively using the web is finally being realized. All of our members are big fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as well and since we realize that blogs and social media will likely never actually overtake the fourth estate, we decided calling ourselves The 42nd Estate was a nice way to describe what we do while also giving a nod to one of our favorite authors. We believe in the power of comedy here at The 42nd Estate and think it’s a great way to connect with your customers and breathe life into your brand.

Hopefully this post will help answer the big question we constantly hear, what’s the deal with your name?

I grew up in the good ol’ state of Wisconsin. After graduating college, I moved off to Honolulu, Hawaii and soaked up some rays on the beach. I have since returned to the mainland and currently live in Phoenix, Arizona.

I am a big techie and have a degree in Web Design/Technical Support. I currently have an office job, which I hate with a passion though I’m escaping the cube farm in the very near future. I also do a lot of freelance work with blogs, web writing, photography, and graphic design and hope to use all my skills to help out the 42nd Estate! 

When I am not here, I spend a good portion of time working on my personal blog, traveling around the world, and taking as many pictures as I can. You can also find me wasting way too much time on Twitter and Facebook.

My favorite hobbies include hiking, which I try to do as much as often. I also like camping (the real kind, no RV’s), and taking road trips across the US. Traveling is the thing I enjoy most, and my future plan is to backpack across Europe and see where that takes me.

While we work on getting our other web-sites up and running let’s introduce each of the founding members of The 42nd Estate, one by one. First up is me, Adam Pieniazek!

For the most part I’ll be writing many of the blog posts here (as I’m the only member without a full-time job, aside from The 42nd Estate) so it’s good to get my introduction out there for you all to see. We strive for as much transparency and disclosure as possible, so if you have any questions or concerns, please let us know via e-mail or a comment below. Do not worry, the other members will also post here from time to time and will visit regularly to answer questions and participate in discussions.

A picture of me styling my best t-shirt.

I’ve been a part of two business startups in the past but they (unfortunately) never came to fruition, unlike The 42nd Estate, which is up, live and ready to rock! I’ve been educated by some very fine institutions, including the U. of North Carolina Chapel Hill (go Heels!), the U. of Southern California (Fight on Trojans!), and the U. of Massachusetts at Amherst (go Minutemen!). I’m also a proud Boston Latin School alumnae, as are the other members of The 42nd Estate, and will to this day affirm that BLS is the best school I’ve attended.

I wear several hats here at The 42nd Estate:

• web-master
• blogger/writer
• pseudo coder
• managing member (e.g. paperwork handler)
• resident dork

When I’m not working here, I’m either writing on my personal blog, facebooking, twittering, biking, jamming out to some tuneskis, reading or just chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’ all cool and all shootin some b-ball outside the school when…oh wait, that’s the Fresh Prince.

My favorite book is 1984, my favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption, and I like too much music to pick a favorite but the Living Legends, Queen, Operation Ivy, Ronald Jenkees, and Eddie Vedder have been in heavy rotation lately.

Seems to me that’s a lot of personal information, but if anyone would like to know more, leave a comment and let me know.

I look forward to seeing you here and together watching The 42nd Estate grow!