Personas is a fascinating art piece that takes a name and ‘scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person – to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data’.
Personas shows you how the Internet sees you. It allows you to see how the machine is working, revealing the computer’s uncanny insights and inadvertent errors such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world where digital histories are as important – if not more important – than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant – for now. Fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, and this kind of data is indispensable but far from infallible.
So go ahead; give it your name and give it a shot.
GamesByEmail.com needed a way to create thousands of dice rolls each day that would be equally random, so it created the Dice-O-Matic, a machine that is able to randomly roll up to 1.3 million die per day!
The machine is surprisingly simple, and uses a central conveyor belt that runs up a column to lift the dice past a camera, which records the numbers, and then down a chute where they roll and tumble to ensure complete randomness:
And you thought your 20-sided D&D dice were difficult to handle!
The last time I was at a McDonald’s, I pulled up to the drive through window and was amazed by what I saw: A machine that prepares your entire drink order without ever needing human interaction.
Here’s the process it goes through: It drops the right size cup (depending on what you order) onto a conveyor belt, moves that cup under an ice dispenser and fills it with ice, moves the cup again under the right soda tap and fills it with the right amount of soda, waits for the fizz to die down, tops it off with more soda, and then moves to where the McDonald’s employee can pick it up. About the only thing it doesn’t do is add a lid, and my guess is that the ability to lid a drink isn’t far off.
Thankfully someone found this whole process as amazing as I did, because I was able to find this video of the machine on YouTube:
I’ve always felt that McDonald’s is going to do everything it can to cut its workers out of the process, and this drink machine just goes to show that the direction they’re heading in is definitely a fully automatic, robotic McDonalds.
You may remember “The Machine”, an All-In-One Beer Making Machine that automatically turned wort concentrate into beer in just a few weeks.
Well now it’s back, and it’s better than ever. Called “The NanoBrewMaster”, this all-in-one device brews, ferments, chills and then serves fresh, ice-cold beer on tap from the convenience of your own home.
With features like an onboard computer system that monitors and controls the introduction of water, extract, hops, yeast and optional ingredients, as well as heating and chilling, a stunning, stainless steel, hardwood, and recessed lighting design, the ability to brew up to 15 gallons per batch, and a Clean In Place system that self-cleans and sterilizes all connectors, containers and tubing with the flick of a switch, the compact and mobile NanoBrewMaster is at home as the centerpiece of any loft, home or bar.
IDEO’s Global Chain Reaction Experience may just be the most impressive Rube Goldberg Machine built to date.
The chain, which fifty people put together across eight worldwide locations in six different time zones on three continents, contains everything from a flaming column of helium bubbles and a cell phone dialing hot dog to a poll dancing [...]
If you liked the San Francisco toothpick tour, then check out this hand cranked machine made entirely out of wood and glue (no nails or screws).
The video takes you step by step through each one of the functions, and it’s impressive to think that you can build something like this with a lot of time [...]
