Thinking back it may not have been such a facetious answer.
Orac was powerful because it networked with other computers, not just sitting there on its own like the traditional super-computer of science fiction (and super-computers 30 years ago). Orac had the ability to communicate with all other computers that carry tarriel cells - the basic component of all computer systems in the Blake's 7 future, designed by Ensor (Orac's creator) at a young age.
Able to mine any data on any computer system it had a vast wealth of raw data at its disposal that it could process into useful information. Thirty years on from the creation of Blake's 7 we are beginning to see the wealth of information that can be provided by the Internet and the beginnings of practical distributed computing in the form of cloud computing.
As Sun Microsystems says: the network is the computer
