Does Your Computer Have a Sense of Humor? November 11, 1996January 31, 2017 So “the network IS the computer,” as they say, or shortly will be, and we will have in our little finger as much computing power as 100 Isaac Newtons strung together in an intellectual chain gang. (Today, I’m told, according to last month’s Fast Company, the world’s “computing capacity” approximates that of 100 trillion human beings.) Ah, but can all that computing power tell a really good joke? With just the right shading and timing and inflection? I DON’T THINK SO. Maybe that’s the ultimate fate of our species: to be the court jesters to a ruling class of supercomputers. Tomorrow I will do my best to render the old joke that naturally flows from this thought. Do you know the one I mean?