Because I’ve been wool-gathering about homeostasis I picked up a Useless Machine (Wikipedia) from Amazon.
It’s a box with a toggle switch on the top. You flip the switch to ON.. a hatch opens, and a little hand emerges. It flips the switch OFF again.
You’ll have seen one, I’m sure. “Executive toys” they used to call this category. (Remember that?)
But also it is the minimal viable homeostatic machine. So it’s the perfect cybernetic demonstration device; pair it with a thermostat and you would have a complete cybernetic model of body and mind.
Well, wild discovery! The Useless Machine toy was invented by computing and AI pioneer Marvin Minsky as a grad student at Bell Labs in 1952. What?
Also the first version was constructed by Claude Shannon, the person who came up with the logic and information theory that underpins all computers and also the inventor of the word “bit”. What??
Letter of Recommendation: The Useless Machine (New York Times, 2016): in refusing to do what it’s told, the machine is stoically following its explicit commands. In this sense, the Useless Machine is like a battery-operated koan.
I would give an arm to invent something as deft as this. Only 50% kidding.
Meanwhile Wikipedia adds this about Minsky:
Minsky also invented a “gravity machine” that will ring a bell if the gravitational constant changes, a theoretical possibility that is not expected to occur in the foreseeable future.
I need a photo of that machine asap.
(I am a fan of unlikely-to-trip tripwires, c.f. the Global Consciousness Project.)
While I’m appreciating scientific instruments, a shout-out to the Michelson-Morley experiment, another deft and fundamental demonstration, this one from 1887:
- Shine a laser at a semi-mirrored glass and split it into two beams at right angles
- Both beams hit mirrors, reflect, and re-combine. Measure the interference pattern.
- Rotate the entire apparatus 90 degrees.
If there is a universal aether, a luminiferous aether,
a medium that permeates all, that light (a wave) is a wave in, then the Earth - as it rides its orbit around the Sun - will also be moving through the aether. The beam of light in the direction of the Earth’s travel will be a little shorter than the one perpendicular. Or you could say it is against the aether wind, if you prefer to put it that way.
If the interference pattern changes, even a little, when you rotate the equipment, then aether exists.
The interference pattern, as it turns out, does not change.
i.e. you can prove the non-existence of a universal medium from your tabletop. Which paves the way for Einstein’s relativity.
It is quite the experiment to do with your own hands. Like looking down a microscope and seeing the entire cosmos.
We are not “on” any substrate, there is no Cartesian net to hold us, we just are and there is nothing beneath but the void.
SEE ALSO:
Newton Gun (1998) by Maywa Denki:
When you pull the trigger, it fires an apple towards the exact centre of the Earth.
(By dropping it.)
Wonderful.
Because I’ve been wool-gathering about homeostasis I picked up a Useless Machine (Wikipedia) from Amazon.
It’s a box with a toggle switch on the top. You flip the switch to ON.. a hatch opens, and a little hand emerges. It flips the switch OFF again.
You’ll have seen one, I’m sure. “Executive toys” they used to call this category. (Remember that?)
But also it is the minimal viable homeostatic machine. So it’s the perfect cybernetic demonstration device; pair it with a thermostat and you would have a complete cybernetic model of body and mind.
Well, wild discovery! The Useless Machine toy was invented by computing and AI pioneer Marvin Minsky as a grad student at Bell Labs in 1952. What?
Also the first version was constructed by Claude Shannon, the person who came up with the logic and information theory that underpins all computers and also the inventor of the word “bit”. What??
Letter of Recommendation: The Useless Machine (New York Times, 2016):
I would give an arm to invent something as deft as this. Only 50% kidding.
Meanwhile Wikipedia adds this about Minsky:
I need a photo of that machine asap.
(I am a fan of unlikely-to-trip tripwires, c.f. the Global Consciousness Project.)
While I’m appreciating scientific instruments, a shout-out to the Michelson-Morley experiment, another deft and fundamental demonstration, this one from 1887:
If there is a universal aether, a a medium that permeates all, that light (a wave) is a wave in, then the Earth - as it rides its orbit around the Sun - will also be moving through the aether. The beam of light in the direction of the Earth’s travel will be a little shorter than the one perpendicular. Or you could say it is against the aether wind, if you prefer to put it that way.
If the interference pattern changes, even a little, when you rotate the equipment, then aether exists.
The interference pattern, as it turns out, does not change.
i.e. you can prove the non-existence of a universal medium from your tabletop. Which paves the way for Einstein’s relativity.
It is quite the experiment to do with your own hands. Like looking down a microscope and seeing the entire cosmos.
We are not “on” any substrate, there is no Cartesian net to hold us, we just are and there is nothing beneath but the void.
SEE ALSO:
Newton Gun (1998) by Maywa Denki:
When you pull the trigger, it fires an apple towards the exact centre of the Earth.
(By dropping it.)
Wonderful.