My Electronic Devices Are Laughing at Me

That's fine, as far as it goes. But it doesn't rule out the possibility that digital assistants think human beings are a joke. Nor that Alexa is laughing at jokes other digital assistants may have just cracked. In a society as technologically out of control as this one, anything is possible. In recent months, thousands of people have written to me (mostly by postcards, often filled to their edges) about an epidemic of belly laughs directed at them by their household appliances.