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If you know anyone who might be interested in the machine, don’t hesitate to pass on the address(la-machine.fr) or post it on your social networks (favorites). Thank you!
🔈 Soundtrack 🔈
“I don’t have a heart
But for you
I make the engines in me dance”
Amour Ex Machina – The Empress
🎓 A little history 🎓
The machine was invented by one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence: Marvin Minsky.
He recounts in a video that he was an intern at Bell Labs in the summer of 1952, working hard to invent “new gadgets”. Among them, what he called the ultimate machine.
His mentor, Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, decides to build a few, and the story begins. (To find out more about Claude Shannon’s work: see the video produced by the Eames and listen to this podcast by Cédric Villani).
One day Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer who, among other things, wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey (Marvin Minsky was also one of Kubrick’s advisors, by the way), saw the machine in Shannon’s office and wrote the following:
“Nothing could be simpler. It is merely a small wooden casket, the size and shape of a cigar box, with a single switch on one face. When you throw the switch, there is an angry, purposeful buzzing. The lid slowly rises, and from beneath it emerges a hand. The hand reaches down, turns the switch off and retreats into the box. With the finality of a closing coffin, the lid snaps shut, the buzzing ceases and peace reigns once more. The psychological effect, if you do not know what to expect, is devastating. There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing – absolutely nothing – except switch itself off.”
If we want to stay with the celebrities who have talked about the machine: the philosopher Ivan Illich (whose principle of counter-productivity is very interesting) talks about it in his book Deschooling Society: he compares our society to the machine, no less.
“Our society resembles the ultimate machine which I once saw in a New York toy shop. It was a metal casket which, when you touched a switch, snapped open to reveal a mechanical hand. Chromed fingers reached out for the lid, pulled it down, and locked it from the inside. It was a box; you expected to be able to take something out of it; yet all it contained was a mechanism for closing the cover. This contraption is the opposite of Pandora’s box.”
And then, we can end the name dropping with this episode of the Fargo series in which Gloria finds a strange box.
All right, then. But did anyone think this was a good business idea? What the internet tells us is that there were at least two attempts at commercialization in the 1960s.
A first called “Monster inside the black-box”.
And then, mad inventor Don Poynter markets a version he calls simply“The Little Black Box“. A little demo?
I don’t know if this little box was very successful, because pretty soon he moved on to the money-making version: the one seen in The Prisoner, episode “The General”.
In 2024, all you have to do is type “useless box” into your search engine, and you’ll easily come across the various versions available from a distributor simply called“Useless Box Store“, which doesn’t skimp on marketing to promote its benefits!
here’s also a Sri Lankan company, Robotszu, which markets some pretty spectacular versions! Including this one!
But above all, the machine has been the subject of hundreds of variations by the “makers” community. And there are some real nuggets out there. See you soon!
☕️ Le café du commerce ☕️
There’s the newsletter, but there’s also the café du commerce, a place where you can chat, see and talk to each other if you need to. It’s a Discord server. You’ll find the invitation link below.
That’s it! That’s all for today. See you back here or at the coffee machine.
Have a nice weekend!
Olivier
PS: If you spot any inaccuracies in this mini history lesson, or if you want to add anything: let me know!