The humor continuum: From text to smart environments (keynote paper)

Abstract

Humor is important in our daily life, whether our activities are at home, at work, or in public spaces, for example during sports or other recreational and entertainment activities. Until now, computational humor, the research area that investigates rules and algorithms to understand and to generate humor, has only looked at verbal humor and in particular puns (word play) and jokes. However, nowadays, humor has to be understood when it appears in digital audiovisual media, or in interactive virtual environments (game environments), or with the help of smart and interactive objects and devices, including wearables. In this paper we discuss the characteristics of the various media and environments in which humor can emerge. The goal however, is to make clear that future smart environments can facilitate humorous event creation by its human partners and can take the initiative to generate humor.