Eddie is the name of the shipboard computer on the starship Heart of Gold. Like every other system on the spaceship, it has a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Genuine People Personality. Thus, Eddie is over-excitable, quite talkative, over-enthused and extremely ingratiating, or alternatively a coddling, school matron-type after a particularly morose conversation with Marvin the paranoid android. Shipboard networking interconnects Eddie with everything from the air conditioning upwards on the Heart of Gold, with the downside the whole ship is effectively crippled by Arthur Dent's request for tea from Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser, the computation of which nearly crashed Eddie and everything connected to him.
