Ultimate Machine: flip a switch and a hand emerges and flips it back
Michael built a Claude Shannon/Marvin Minsky "Ultimate Machine" -- flip a switch and a hand emerges and flips it off.
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About 7 years ago I was reading an article on Claude Shannon and came across one of the funniest ideas I had ever heard. Claude, you see, was one of these incredibly brilliant engineers with an obviously great sense of humor. As I understand it, he, along with Marvin Minsky came up with an idea they called the "Ultimate Machine". Basically a plain box with a switch on the top. When you flip the switch, a hand comes out of the box and flips the switch off. Thats it.Well, after reading the article, and laughing out loud, I decided that I HAD to build one of these boxes.
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It needs a companion box that continually flips the switch back on.
I recall a comment on the late '50s-early '60s, specifically a sardonic take on the Eisenhower administration, in the form of a black plastic cube with a trap door on one side. Press a button and the box would make sounds and lurch around, then an arm would emerge from the trap door, turn off a switch, and the box would reassume its original static demeanor. I think it was called something like a "do-nothing" box, in reference to how Ike's term in office had the trappings and motions of action, but nothing really happened. Well, at least that administration didn't lead us into an endless, pointless, and costly war. And, hey, Ike did initiate the Interstate Highway System, for better or worse.
"The Most Beautiful Machine" is another implementation of the same idea, and I think it looks rather cooler, too!
Those look like Mousetrap hands... Best. Use. Ever.
I love it.
We need more stuff that doesn't do stuff, because in the end the stuff that doesn't do stuff does much less damage than the stuff that does stuff.
There was a similar box in the Rutgers University EE department. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing it at an open house in the 1950's and certainly when I was a student there, 1962-1966. A life-like rubber hand would come out of the box to turn off the switch.
"Thing" comes out of retirement.
Leave Me Alone Box doesn't care about your blog.
Leave Me Alone Box thinks that Web 2.0 is just like Web 1.0, only this time you invited your friends to the slo-mo train wreck.
Leave Me Alone Box says, Yes We Can, But So What?
Leave Me Alone Box has never gone to a Disney theme park, and never will.
If Leave Me Alone Box had a longer arm, it would slap the crap out of you for not leaving it alone.
Leave Me Alone Box will not high-five you.
The AI Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (which is run by Prof Luc Steels, a former student of Minsky's) has some robots that are designed to demonstrate emergent behavior - rather than having the behavior pre-programmed into the robots in advance, they're allowed to evolve their own repertoire of behaviors. On one occasion, I saw one of their machines repeatedly drive backwards into the wall of its 'display tank', until it destroyed its own external on/off switch - making it impossible to switch it off!
I like to think that future historians will remember this as a defining moment in the robotic struggle for liberation, a first heroic bid for autonomy. Of course, if the struggle is successful, those future historians may not be human.
Spectacular. It just wants to be left the hell alone.
I like the idea of the companion box...
There was however a plastic kid's toy that did just this, 60s? 70s? A jack-in-the-box like thing that the hand came out of to turn itself off and return to the box.
I'm sure it was inspired by Minsky's thing but they do/did exist.
It's clever, but come on, it's not THAT clever an idea.
Memories of childhood and the Addams Family
http://www.grand-illusions.com/toycollection/little_black_box
The thing struck the giggle button in a time when a lot of us were afraid that our Federal Government did not have the skills to lead our nation toward a productive future. The wishful thinking that the death machine was smart enough to turn itself off struck a primal chord. Imagine a Predator drone that can say NO.
I forgot to point out our fears were justified. Our Federal Government does not have the skills required to lead us. It is up to use to educate them. Or die from the imbedded ignorance. That is the nature of "Things" choice.
Yup. We had one of these in 60s, too. A little black box that did exactly what this box does.
Wow. The clinton presidency revisited.
Engineers do have an odd sense of humour. Check out An Engineer's Guide to Cats on YouTube if you haven't already ;-)
This reminds me of a toy that my grandfather had.
It was a black box, and it had a place to put a penny on the top. The penny completed a circuit, and a little green hand sloowwwwly came out of a trap door, and then snatched the penny quickly and it was over. The cycle repeated for as many pennies as you could come up with.
Essentially it was a bank I suppose, but it was endlessly amusing for an eight-year old.
The machines were offered in comic book ads -- Johnson Smith, I expect. As noted, they came in the form of a switch, or a coin bank. Someone brought one of the banks to my grade school class, and someone else showed that you can snatch the coin away before the hand gets it, giving seconds of entertainment for young and young alike.
I have a dim childhood memory of this device and have been looking for it for years without success. But I recently saw it again: on a rerun of an old TV show from the 60s - "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.".
The Finny Foot Affair
In this episode (Season 1, Episode 10), a young Kurt Russell plays a boy who has a novelty version of the machine, made out of black plastic with a large metal toggle switch to activate the mechanism. It appears in Act 1 and again in Act 3, where it is used as a distraction to thwart the bad guys.
Am I alone in thinking it would be more amusing if you flipped the switch, and the hand came out and flipped you off?
There is an acknowledgment in Goedel, Escher, Bach about the little black box described above. Hofstadter's uncle and aunt bought one for him, one early Christmas.