"I like to build machines that make people laugh"
Another wonderful talk from the Maker preview day on Thursday (we did this day because of complaints from exhibitors at the Maker Faire that they didn't have time to see each other's work) was from Tim Hunkin. Tim is probably best known for his work on the BBC UK TV series The Secret Life of Machines, but he also rebuilds old arcade games into machines worthy of Wallace and Gromit.
I loved Tim's ambition to "build machines that make people laugh." Machines are part of our lives, and a fabulous subject for comedy.
Tim will be reprising the talk on the main stage at 4 pm today (Saturday). And someone has built a giant replica of one of Hunkins machines out on the midway. Customers run in the gerbil cage in order to make the "disgusting spectacle" pick his nose:
(Photo from Laughing Squid.)
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What the coolest thing about the machine? Is that you have to make a decision to run like a gerbil just to make that thing pick its nose. If you are watching the thing in action you'd get to see two funny things. The person running and the nose picking.
Also the human powered aspect is cool. No push button solution. A low tech winner.
The human powered aspect is the most wonderful thing about all of the rides on the midway at Maker Faire: a merry-go-round consisting of bicycles that people ride around in circles (definitely a machine that made me smile, if not laugh); another spinning ride where the parents bicycle in the middle to make the cars containing their kids spin around the outside; a two-person ferris wheel powered by the participants themselves (a combination of bicycling and swing-style momentum), etc. It was really lovely. Also incredibly lovely to be at a fair where everything is home-made, and all the rides are free, a labor of love shared by their makers. The joy of the kids is something to behold. (Even the nose-picking machine, which truth be told, got a little old as I stood in a food line for a half hour while a barker kept up nose-picking patter for the entire time (patter personalized for each kid riding the gerbil wheel no less.)
Speaking of the food, it was the only sour note at the fair, because the lines were so long. Guess why: professional vendors, regulated by the city or county, and not enough of them, because they didn't believe how many people we'd draw. Oh well. But wouldn't it be amazing if they let us have food makers to show their stuff.
I love the idea of human powered machines, but I would love to see this in a higher tech application. Human powered laptops such as the $100 laptop interest me.
jack --
I agree -- and we're very interested in useful human powered machines and techniques for powering them, such as Potenco's pulley-based power supply, or the work that was done on the pedal powered internet. But it's important to remember that many key trends start out with people having fun. One of our "trade secrets" at O'Reilly is that we watch alpha geeks at play and think about the implications of what they are doing.
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Gary [05.19.07 12:51 PM]
Not a big deal but the BBC did not make Tim's SLOM - it was a Channel 4 series.