1. THESIS ONE
Digital Absurdity
Michael Silber | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

2. “Nothing in man is more
serious than his sense of
humor; it is the sign that
he wants all the truth.”
-Mark van Doren
Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

3. Hypothesis
This thesis presents the hypothesis that
humor emerges from the incongruities of
digital experience.
Humor in this form celebrates juxtapositions,
boundary confusion, and promotes
absurd connections.
Digital media generate unexpected
incongruities, enable us to record incongruous
phenomena, and provide us a means to share
and broadcast them. As a result, the digital
experience feeds our addiction to humor.
Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

4. Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

5. The Persistence of Humor
Through All Media
Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

6. Philosophers on Humor
A Tickling of the Mind.
- Charles Darwin
A Mixture of Joy and Shock.
- Rene Descartes
A Sudden Glory.
- Thomas Hobbes
A Comparison Between Noble and Ignoble States.
- Aristotle
Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

7. Humor Theories
Incongruity-Resolution Superiority
Relief Play
Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

8. Problem Solving
and the Aha-moment
Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

9. Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

10. Is there an evolutionary/
adaptive explanation for the
existence of humor?
How does humor define
our humanity?
Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

11. Perception
We only see what we look at. To look is an act
of choice […] We never look at one thing; we
are always looking at the relation between
things and ourselves. Our vision is continually
active, continually moving, continually
holding things in a circle around itself,
constituting what is present to us as we are.
-John Berger - "Ways of Seeing"
Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

12. The Digital Experience
and Absurdity
Incongruent fragments of
written, verbal, and visual
information can become fused
in nonsensical absurd ways,
as our minds seek to
process and organize.
Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

13. Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

14. Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

15. Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

16. Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein

17. If you put things together in
just the right way you can
create transcendent effect.
-Ray Kurzweil
Michael Silber | Directed Research | Professor Tom Klinkowstein