The Internet Oracle (historically known as The Usenet Oracle) is an effort at collective

humor Humour (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humorism, humoral medicine of the ancient Gre ...

in a pseudo- Socratic question-and-answer format. A user sends a question ("tellme") to the Oracle via

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

, or the Internet Oracle website, and it is sent to another user (another "incarnation" of the Oracle) who may answer it. Meanwhile, the original questioner is also sent a question to answer. All exchanges are conducted through a central distribution system which makes all users anonymous. Unanswered questions are returned to the queue after a day or two. Users may also request ("askme") unanswered questions without posing their own. A completed question-and-answer pair is called an "Oracularity".

Style

A representative (and famous) exchange is: :''The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.'' :''Your question was:'' :''> Why is a cow?'' :''And in response, thus spake the Oracle:'' :''} Mu.'' Many of the Oracularities contain

Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

references and witty wordplay. "

Geek The word ''geek'' is a slang term originally used to describe Eccentricity (behavior), eccentric or non-mainstream people; in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit. In th ...

" humor is also common, though less common than in the early years of the Oracle's existence, when fewer casual home computer users had Internet access. Most Oracularities are significantly longer than the above example, and they sometimes take the form of rambling narratives, poems, top-ten lists, spoofing of

interactive fiction '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...

games, or anything else that can be put into plain text. A complex Oracle mythos has also evolved around the figure of an omniscient, anthropomorphic, geeky deity and a host of grovelling priests and attendants. Other staples in conversation with the Oracle include: * A ''*ZOT*'' (administered with the Staff of Zot, see LART) is earned when the Oracle is irritated. *ZOT*s are something like lightning strikes and are usually fatal. Unscrupulous participants will sometimes administer undeserved *ZOT*s. The particular word ''*ZOT*'' may be a reference to the comic strip '' B.C.'' Alternatively, it may be an allusion to

Walter Karig Walter may refer to: People * Walter (name), both a surname and a given name * Little Walter, American blues harmonica player Marion Walter Jacobs (1930–1968) * Gunther (wrestler), Austrian professional wrestler and trainer Walter Hahn (born 19 ...

's 1947 novel entitled ''

Zotz! ''Zotz!'' is a 1962 American fantasy comedy film produced and directed by William Castle, and starring Tom Poston, Julia Meade, Jim Backus, Fred Clark, and Cecil Kellaway. It is about a man obtaining magical powers from a god of an ancient civ ...

'', in which a person could point at anyone or anything, say "Zotz!" and make that thing or person instantly disintegrate. *

Woodchuck The groundhog (''Marmota monax''), also known as a woodchuck, is a rodent of the family Sciuridae, belonging to the group of large ground squirrels known as marmots. The groundhog is a lowland creature of North America; it is found through mu ...

questions are a sure way to earn a *ZOT*. The Oracle will often censor the word "woodchuck" as "w..dch.ck" or simply refer to it obliquely (" rodent of unusual size"). This is a reference to "The Woodchuck Question": "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?", which in the early days of the Usenet Oracle, was over-asked to the point of being a cliché. * Traditionally, questions to the Oracle open with a suitable grovel such as "High and Mighty Oracle, please answer my most humble question," although grovels are often very creative and can be very long, or even part of the question. * Answers from the Oracle traditionally contain a request for payment such as "You owe the Oracle a

rubber chicken A rubber chicken is a prop used in comedy. The phrase is also used as a description for food served at speeches, conventions, and other large meetings, and as a metaphor for speechmaking. Description A rubber chicken is an imitation plucked fowl ...

and a Cadillac." This segment, often called the "YOTO line" (for "You owe the Oracle") or tribute, often refers to objects that are related, in a punny way, to the answer they are a part of. * Mentioning DMP, Dumpie, or "the cooler incident" will usually result in a response with details on how to profit by helping with a transfer of a large sum of money from an account in Nigeria. An assorted mythos of recurring characters—or in-jokes—has accumulated over the years. These include the worthless High Priest Zadoc (sometimes with an assistant named Kendai), the Oracle's girlfriend Lisa the ''Net.Sex.Goddess'', an assortment of deities, and the

caveman The caveman is a stock character representative of primitive humans in the Paleolithic. The popularization of the type dates to the early 20th century, when Neanderthals were influentially described as " simian" or "ape-like" by Marcellin ...

figure Og.

Administration, Digests, and the Priesthood

The Oracularities are compiled into periodic digests by a team of volunteer "priests", who read every Oracularity and select what they consider the best. These are posted to the

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

newsgroup rec.humor.oracle, the Oracle website, and also distributed via e-mailing list. Now, the forum is basically about asking silly questions to get silly answers; consequently questions meant for libelous intent, questions of a sexual nature, and serious questions are not apt to this forum (although an exception may be made when a serious question is given a particularly silly or funny answer). An especially adept incarnation may occasionally deal with such questions in keeping with the forum—absurdly, perhaps masking the truth, perhaps framing the truth from an absurd viewpoint, or perhaps resorting to nothing but demanding an absurd tribute.

Usenet discussion group

There is a usenet group, news:rec.humor.oracle.d, which is populated by a variety of participants in the Internet Oracle. The group is rife with TOIJs (''tired old in-jokes''), obscure references and dry humor. This is probably the only group on multicast e-mail systems of any sort where "OT:..." means ''on'' topic.

Origins

Peter Langston Peter Langston (born 1946) is a computer programmer who wrote and distributed for free several games for Unix systems in the 1970s, including one of the earliest text adventure video games '' Wander'', the original version of ''Empire'' and the pro ...

is credited with the initial idea for an Oracle program. In 1976, he wrote one which ran at the

Harvard Science Center The Harvard University Science Center is Harvard's main classroom and laboratory building for undergraduate science and mathematics, in addition to housing numerous other facilities and services. Located just north of Harvard Yard, the Science Ce ...

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

time-sharing system. He then distributed the program via the PSL Games Tape to Unix installations around the world until 1988. In 1989, Lars Huttar was told about Langston's Oracle by a friend at college. Not knowing where to obtain a copy, he wrote his own version of the program, which only worked when users were logged into the same computer. Huttar posted the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

to the Usenet group alt.sources in August. Steve Kinzler, who was a graduate student and

system administrator A system administrator, or sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administrator seeks to ensu ...

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

, downloaded Huttar's code that same year. He deployed it as the Usenet Oracle on a university server and it became popular. Ray Moody, a graduate student at Purdue University, enhanced the program to allow access via e-mail. This allowed anyone on the Internet to use the Oracle. Kinzler installed this version on another Indiana University computer, where it resided until 2014. It was renamed the Internet Oracle in March 1996. Kinzler has since made further enhancements, the most prominent being the "priests" choosing Oracularities for irregularly published digests. He provides a server to host the Oracle program, its web site, and archives.Stewart, "History"

Notes

References

* Sewell, David R. "The Internet Oracle: Virtual Authors and Network Community.
First Monday 2.6
(June 1997) * Stewart, William.

''Living Internet''. 2 September 2006. Accessed 14 September 2006. {{refend

External links

The Internet Oracle
Usenet Internet culture Computer humor Question-and-answer websites