The Answer to Life, the Web and Everything: AI’s Search for Meaning

The Web’s Ongoing Search for Meaning I recently had dinner with my amazing dad, one of Italy’s most passionate collectors of Urania and a lifelong science fiction enthusiast. Over our favorite pizzas, our conversation drifted to artificial intelligence and technological advancements. This reminded my dad of a short story he loves: Fredric Brown’s The Answer. The brief tale imagines a moment of unprecedented technological achievement in an undefined future: a vast supercomputer, created by linking all computing machines across the universe, is activated for the first time. The implications of this event, and the question it is asked, explore humanity’s relationship with knowledge, technology, and the search for meaning.