Man Embraces Useless Machines, and Absurdity Ensues | Hacker News Reader

Man Embraces Useless Machines, and Absurdity Ensues

nytimes.com

143 pointsFluidDjango21 comments

Here in Japan there is a TV station called NHK which make a series of awesome Rube Goldberg machines called 'pythagora switch' and film them for a children't show. The video quality and construction is great and they use nothing that you couldn't find in your house. Some are very simple but the mechanics they use are frequently absolutely shocking. They always end by raising a small flag and arranging the letters of the show. I'm surprised I never saw them until I moved here. I could watch them for hours.

I found a DVD of it that comes with a book in the store here and I was going to buy it as a gift for my family but I realized it's probably the wrong region. I can't find an example video online right now. In Japanese it's called:

ピタゴラスイッチ

http://www.nhk.or.jp/kids/program/pitagora.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PythagoraSwitch

Youtube had dozens, but apparently NHK removed them :(

Yeah it's a shame. I finally found some examples on vimeo:

http://vimeo.com/13420214

And here is another: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2435046286370275454

He mentions that show in the description to his video[1]:

"Much credit must be give to the amazing Pitagora Suicchi ones for all their original ideas!"

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrCb_fNmSTA

Oh I didn't notice that. Several of the ideas are direct implementations of things done in the NHK show. For example the hammers pushing the ball uphill, the group of balls getting trapped in a pit while one rides over the top and continues along to later release them, etc.. There should be a design patterns book for this stuff. :-)

These fan-made videos are great but they also make me shake my head in wonder at the production quality of the original. Everything is so well constructed and precise.

There is also the 29-minute long "Art film", "The Way Things Go". Basically 29 minutes of a Rube Goldberg machine, including a lot of pyrotechnics. Pretty interesting stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Lauf_Der_Dinge

I thought "Man" from the headline was a synecdoche for humanity and was ready for a depressing anti-technology article.

I was pleasantly surprised.

I thought the same thing too and was also pleasantly surprised. In the past, I've always just found these machines entertaining, as opposed to funny. I never knew they were supposed to be funny; I always thought they were just supposed to be pointlessly entertaining ("Ooo what's going to happen next?!") but I definitely got a good laugh out of the end there. The guy certainly proved the hilarity of making the simplest task as ridiculously complicated as possible.

And I'm reminded of times in the past where I've unintentionally solved a problem in software engineering through a ridiculously complicated method where there was actually a much simpler solution unapparent to me. At the time, it wasn't funny; but looking back now, it certainly is.

I wonder how many times it took him to get it to work right, especially with the hamster likely being the most unpredictable component of the system.

He's right, there's something about the machines that makes me laugh--the 5 watering cans in particular made me giggle. Though I have to say I cringed when the macbook fell off the table. I hope it has an SSD (or a pillow under it)…

As a kid, I used to always try and create machines like this in my room. I think I was inspired by the movie "The Goonies".

Nothing I ever created worked very well, but most of the fun was in trying anyway. This story does make me want to set something up in my shed though...

Right there with you. Never was good at creating these, but actually did get that game mousetrap because of this reason.

This seems like it would be a good pastime for kids. Teaches patience, trial-and-error, engineering, creativity, etc.

Sadly they call it 'useless'. something that takes effort, creativity, and engineering perfection to build is never useless. It improves your way o thinking, engineering skills, patience, and other valuable essence that would take years to be invested in yourself through some other means. In addition, it is an entertainment to me.

I have seen a lot of these machines since i was a kid, and I am always amazed each time I see this.

I agree with the idea to introduce this as a hobby to kids. I was myself introduced to programming as a hobby and never knew what it was for. I did it because I like it. You build whatever you want, whatever you like, make sure it always excites you whenever you get up in the morning and continue working on it, and never stop learning about it. There's no such thing as 'useless' machine.

The machines are not useless- at a minimum they have one purpose- to entertain the viewers. A rather unfortunate use of the word - gives the impression that this is going to be some kind of return-to-pre-industrial article.

This is the kind of Modern Art that I understand and brings a smile to the face.

I loved the guinea pig and the hairdryer!

I'd imagine that to sell them you'd have to package them up in a rectangular box, and build them to be automated. You'd need to find creative ways to keep the water-pouring systems hydrated. If you made a backing board with a ball-run inside it, along with a lot of ball lifts, you could build something that could repopulate it's balls back to their original places. It'd be as much or more work than designing the original though. And chemical reactions and hamsters would be right out.

I guess the same concept can be applied to write software programs whose goal is to perform some crazy tasks in order to do something very simple.

For example a browser which shows the animation of a person going to California to Google Offices asking for HTML bringing it back to the user,effectively parsing each line and finally showing Google.com could be an awesome idea.But then I wonder if anyone would be entertained by this!

Anyone got any other ideas for Rube Goldberg software programs?

Looks great fun :-)

I've been involved with Meccano for years and there's a popular family of models that are sort of perpetual versions of this sort of thing, sending balls on endless loops.

The best ones are a bit functionally dense to really appreciate except in person, but here's one I saw a few years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf25bYSjD9M

I thought this was going to be about hispter rube goldberg machines, and it's kind of about that, but still, the guy travels to build rube goldberg devices, and was inspired by Pythagoras's Switch (a Japanese children's television show that was posted on youtube for some time, and became a bit of a phenomenon).

So yeah, a little bit hipster, but a guy who actually seems to care about doing something neat (albeit useless).

building the machines looks like low level programming :)

The last part of the video was hilarious

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