Score one for the nerds
Our school was way ahead of the curve when it came to IT provision. This was back in the 80s, but we had a dedicated computer block with four rooms full of kit. One room contained a couple of dozen networked RM Nimbus PCs -- state-of-the-art at that time, and us nerds were in hog heaven. We'd spend our break, lunch and even free study periods there (often sneaking into other peoples' lessons and using the free machines at the back). No, none of us had girlfriends.

Anyway, the whole system used a single, central hard drive (or 'Winchester Disk' as we called it, rather quaintly). This meant that machines could share files, and one bright spark realised that you could use this feature for a primitive form of Instant Messaging: a 'client' machine saved a message to a file, while the other client was looking for the file every second or so. Once a message was seen it was deleted, and another message could be sent back. And so on. Great for chatting across the classroom when you were supposed to be working.

At the same time, a friend of mine had been working on a little program that made a very basic stab at 'natural language' (a bit like Eliza). Although it was occasionally amusing, it was never more than a curiosity. However my devious little brain put two and two together...

There was this fella that no-one particularly liked: he hung around with us because we were the bottom of the social ladder, but he was an obnoxious twat and we just used him as the butt of our jokes. So one day my friend invited him into the lab to show him his secret project...a truly artificially-intelligent computer program! In under 50K of BASIC!

I sat on the back row, apparently working on some unrelated project. Dickhead was in the row in front, chatting (typing) away to this program and gradually becoming more and more astounded at its ability to understand and respond instantly to even the most complex questions. Not only had it mastered the English language and learned all about the world, it had even mastered insults:

Him: "What colour is the sky?"
Computer: "The sky is blue."
Him: "No it's not, the sky is pink."
Computer: "No you stupid bastard, the sky is blue."

The funniest part was watching him the following lunchtime, as he excitedly told everyone he met about this amazing program. Eventually, of course, we had to let him in on the joke -- and the payoff of watching his face as the truth dawned was simply priceless.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Thu 13 Dec 2007, 14:55, Reply)