Editing 1448: Question

{{comic
| number    = 1448
| date      = November 17, 2014
| title     = Question
| image     = question.png
| titletext = The universe long dead, IsaAC surveyed the formless chaos. At last, he had arrived at an answer. 'I like you,' he declared to the void, 'but I don't LIKE like you.'
}}

==Explanation==
The comic is a reference to a short story by Isaac Asimov "{{w|The Last Question}}", where humans kept asking successively more complex computers whether {{w|entropy}} can be reversed, thereby preventing the {{w|heat death of the universe}}. The computers always answered "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER". In the end, the final computer figured out the answer, but there were no humans left to give the answer to.

The comic depicts a note to “Isaac” (Isaac Asimov). The note asks Isaac to identify whether he likes the note-writer by choosing either “yes” or “no”. Isaac is supposed to check an answer and hand the note back, but Isaac (whose pen is red) has written and selected a third answer, "there is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer", mirroring the way his computers in the short story responded. Notes of this form are stereotypically written by young schoolchildren to gauge or incite romantic interest. This allows impatient children to get an answer during a class, and timid children to get an answer without having to ask the person face to face.

Title text is a reference to the ending in “The Last Question”. The unique capitalization of "IsaAC" in this text implies that IsaAC is an acronym for a type of supercomputer named with a similar convention to the computers in "The Last Question". Instead of the computer climatically coming up with the solution on how to save the universe from entropy when all humanity is gone, like in the “The Last Question", IsaAC comes up with the anticlimactic excuse of an answer 'I like you, but I don't LIKE like you'. “LIKE like” is a childish euphemism for romantic interest. In "The Last Question", a character considers a thought that perhaps AC stands for "analog computer", but in reality this was never the case; for example, ENIAC stands for "Electronic Numerical Integrator ''And Computer''" and UNIVAC stands for "UNIVersal ''Automatic Computer''". This title text may also be meant to imply that Isaac Asimov was a supercomputer.

The original story can be read [http://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf here].

Comic [[1737: Datacenter Scale]] also references the short-story in the title text.

==Transcript==
:[A piece of paper.]
:Dear Isaac
:Do you like me?
:□ Yes
:□ No
:<font color="red">☒ there is as yet</font>
:<font color="red">insufficient data for</font>
:<font color="red">a meaningful answer</font>
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Romance]]