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"I realized there was a heavy-duty change coming in biology, and I could write a really compelling novel about catastrophic evolution, punctuated equilibrium."
- Greg Bear
 |
| Meson Filter | ||
| Provides robots with the ability to tell the difference between jokes that provide a chuckle and jokes that provide a belly laugh. |
Lester the Jester decides to test his new robot comedian Rupert.
| "Hey, Rupert, tell me a joke."
Rupert's mouth opened. His voice clacked out, rising and falling like a sine wave. "On what subject, sir?" The Rholg's mechanic leaned across his flat purple chest. "That's another gimmick - a meson filter. You said you wanted him to be able to distinguish between laugh-power in different gags so he could fit them to the audience. And price was no object. That's all you have to tell a tech. They knocked themselves out developing a gadget to do the job just right..." |
| Technovelgy from The Jester,
by William Tenn. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1951 Additional resources -
|
Rupert the robot comedian is also a very early example of a machine that is able to laugh - in this case, at his own jokes:
"That's another bug the techs didn't have time to clean up. Comes from the meson filter. Near as we can figure out it's what they call an aftereffect of his capacity to distinguish between gags that are partly funny and gags that are very funny. Electronic differentiation of the grotesque, as it says in the specifications - in man, a sense of humor. 'Course in a robot, it only means there's a kink in the exhaust."
Compare to Mycroft Holmes, the computer humorist from Robert Heinlein's 1966 novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
The robot, standing perfectly immobile, was clacking wildly, grinding his gears and pinging his wires as if he were coming apart.
('The Jester' by William Tenn)
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and Technology from The Jester
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and Technology by William Tenn
Tech news articles related to The Jester
Tech news articles related to works by William Tenn
Meson Filter-related
news articles:
- Pathways Language Model (PaLM) Is No Joke
| WiFi and AI Team Up To See Through Walls |
| Does The Shortage Of Human Inputs Limit AI Development? |
| Singapore Writers Push Back On LLM Training |
| Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo |
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'The border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
'We made a crude , small cell and were delighted - and, I admit, somewhat surprised - to find it worked.'
'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'The clothes and jewelery drew their tiny power requirements from her movements.'
'At the end of each appendage's eight fingers there are tinier appendages...'
