Flipperwaldt posted:

I've got some cds with a code like that.

I get that it's not terribly useful or relevant for the end user, but I don't see how it's a limted system.

Mr. Flunchy posted:

Arsenic Lupin posted:

In the Gaylord Model C system,

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Gaylord Model C system

Rides Naked posted:

Well, since someone brought up Project Cybersyn, why not a brief, incomplete, Relics of Cybernetics mini-megapost?

What is Cybernetics?
Cybernetics is a nomad science. Okay, perhaps that is an unhelpful first descriptor. Cybernetics is a cross-disciplinary method of analyzing control systems through an abstraction of information into components of signal and noise. Most notably developed by polymath Norbert Wiener and collaborator Claude Shannon as a way to study communication systems, it quickly became what philosopher/historian of science Peter Galison terms a 'trading zone' -- a conceptual space wherein a variety of different disciplines can share the same common vocabulary in a productive manner, a sort of collaborative zone that escapes the logic of scientific incommensurability. This meant that cybernetic thought entered into everything from sociology/politics/religion (Wiener's own The Human Use of Human Beings and his really quite odd God and Golem, Inc.) to biology (Maturana/Varela's work on vision systems) to anthropology/philosophy of mind (Gregory Bateson) to management (Project Cybersyn).

Even though there isn't much talk about cybernetics proper in the modern era, the logic it developed still permeates modern society. , especially in the explication of indeterminate/chaotic systems, many of which rely on the "noise" of the outside to generate novel behavior. (For more on the progression of cybernetic thought through the modern era see N. Katherine Hayles How We Became Posthuman)

In addition, early cyberneticists were fond of building little self-regulating machines to emphasize their less pragmatic philosophical concerns. One of the first of this number was, in fact, intended to be quite practical, and quite deadly.

Wiener's Antiaircraft Predictor
(This section relies on Peter Galison's "The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision," Critical Inquiry 21.1 Autumn 1994. You can probably google it up (and you probably should))

Though far from the foment of militarized research labs like Bletchley Park (he was not invited to the Manhattan Project), Wiener expressed an early desire to make his control-systems research useful to the war effort. With some thought, he decided that an aiming system for anti-aircraft guns would fit wonderfully within the purview of cybernetics. Considered properly, the relationship between an anti-aircraft gunner and the pilot he is attempting to hit becomes a feedback loop:

1. Gunner fires at pilot
2. Pilot adjusts course in order to avoid a flaming death
3. Gunner adjusts aiming in order to hit pilot on his new course
4. Goto 1

Wiener's insight was that if he could make a servo-mechanical instrument that could intervene between steps 1 and 2, predicting the evasive maneuvers to be taken by the enemy, the feedback loop (and the pilot's life) could be cut short. In order to take such a step, Wiener would effectively "black box" the human elements of the gunner and the pilot, abstracting their specific individuality into a pattern of behaviors that have some degree of predictability. In this case, Wiener constructed the universal pilot as, essentially, a game theory robot. By assuming that the pilot would always make the "correct" ie, the most tactically efficient evasive maneuver (and that the gunner would do essentially the same) Wiener not only found a practical solution to the problem of human-cybernetic systems, he also promulgated, essentially, a theory of human mind. Through this reductionist move, Wiener performed the sort of abstraction that would allow cybernetics to tunnel its way through many different departments and think-tanks. This black-boxing of the human sets the ground for something like Gregory Bateson's much later Steps to an Ecology of Mind, a work that uses cybernetics to explore human social and mental systems. Probably good since as a practical machine, the predictor ended an incomplete failure.

Ross Ashby and the Homeostat
(This one relies on Andrew Pickering's article "Cybernetics and the Mangle: Ashby, Beer and Pask" Social Studies of Science 32.3)

This is your brain on cybernetics

While cybernetics finds its origins in America, it quickly found foreign enthusiasts like British psychiatrist Ross Ashby. Convinced that cybernetics could model the functioning of the human brain, he built the homeostat as the representative object of this theory. To quote Pickering's more eloquent description of the object:

"The homeostat was an electrical device, which took electrical inputs and turned them into outputs. The input current passed through a coil within the homeostat, generating a magnetic field which exerted a torque on a needle or vane on the top of the machine, causing it to rotate in one direction or the other. The needle was itself part of an electrical circuit, and the end of the needle dipped into a semicircular trough of water across which a constant voltage was maintained by a battery. Thus the varying position of the needle controlled the current that flowed through it - which, after amplification, was in turn the output current of the homeostat unit. (415)"

Ashby initially plugged four of the units together, output to input. In this configuration, the machines were nigh unpredictable. They could end up stable, with all of the needles in the middle of their potential ranges, with small perturbations passing through the systems and self-regulating back to center. Or, they could be unstable, where all the needles would stay stuck in the furthest corner of their ranges. By including a device that would reset the homeostat if the system moved too far towards instability, Ashby created a system that would effectively "learn" to become stable through trial and error, a key explication, in his view of how the human brain worked, and a key step towards theories of autopoiesis.

Hopefully that was interesting, I can do more if it was.

Call Now posted:

Mods?

Brother Jonathan posted:

Here's an example of obsolete technology: the Stanley Steam Car:

Loomer posted:

What, you never heard of Gaylord Industries?

ol qwerty bastard posted:

Steam engines are so cool

Here's a picture of an early locomotive that I saw last month:


And here's another Leno video about a car with a propulsion system that never caught on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2A5ijU3Ivs

If I could have any classic car, it would probably be a turbine car, because holy hell they are neat.

ol qwerty bastard posted:

And here's another Leno video about a car with a propulsion system that never caught on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2A5ijU3Ivs

If I could have any classic car, it would probably be a turbine car, because holy hell they are neat.

Brother Jonathan posted:

Agreed. It has drifted away from "obsolete and failed technology" and into just technology in general. For example, trolleybuses are a well-established and successful technology.


Here's an example of obsolete technology: the Stanley Steam Car:



It looks like a normal early automobile until you open the hood:



Here's a video by Jay Leno demonstrating how to start the car:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnab5sG9PQs

quote:

Ford's nuclear automobile embodied the naive optimism of the era. Most people were ignorant of the dangers of the atomic contraption, as well as the risk that every minor fender-bender had the potential to become a radioactive disaster. In fact, the Nucleon concept was often received with great enthusiasm. Some sources even claim that the US government sponsored Ford's atomic car research program.

BillyJoeBob posted:

The Ford Nucleon, featuring a miniature nuclear reactor used to drive a steam turbine.



I don't think you can get a more 1950's car.

BillyJoeBob posted:

Continuing the trend of weird obsolete steam cars, how about something that was never built?

The Ford Nucleon, featuring a miniature nuclear reactor used to drive a steam turbine.



http://www.damninteresting.com/the-atomic-automobile/


I don't think you can get a more 1950's car.

Monkey Fracas posted:

This car is pretty much Fallout: The Car. It's got that "Yaaayyy nuclear power! Everything should be nuclear powered! My toaster has a small reactor in it! " vibe to it.

http://server.zol.com.cn/180/1805690.html posted:

October 1993, under the leadership of the Guo-Jie Li, smart center independently developed China's first SMP (symmetric multiprocessor) Architecture Computer - dawn on the 1st computer, thus breaking a Chinese road to high-performance computers. Dawn on the 1st 863 made our country a major achievement, which indicates that China has mastered the design and manufacturing support for symmetric multi-threading mechanism tightly coupled parallel machine of the world's advanced level, reducing the country in parallel processing technology with foreign gap.

MadScientistWorking posted:

Well truth be told this actually did happen to a certain extent. Russia has about a 1000 of RTGs them lying around the country side and combined with scrap metal hunters you can imagine what happens. Its not even an obsolete technology though as nuclear batteries are in use right now.

Monkey Fracas posted:

This car is pretty much Fallout: The Car. It's got that "Yaaayyy nuclear power! Everything should be nuclear powered! My toaster has a small reactor in it! " vibe to it.

quote:

The Radium Ore Revigator was a pseudoscientific medical device consisting of a ceramic water crock lined with radioactive materials. It was patented in 1912 by R. W. Thomas, an invalid in California,[1] and manufactured by the Radium Ore Revigator Co., which sold thousands of the devices in the 1920s and '30s.

The Revigator was intended to be filled with water overnight, which would be irradiated by the uranium and radium in the liner, and then consumed the next day. This was marketed as a healthy practice which could prevent illnesses including arthritis, flatulence, and senility.

The Revigator contained carnotite K2(UO2)2(VO4)2·3H2O. Water stored overnight in a vintage Revigator was analyzed by ICP/MS and radiation detectors. Although the water contained higher levels of radon, the health risk from radiation was low. But the water also contained arsenic, lead, vanadium, and uranium.

dissss posted:

Speaking of that I came across this wikipedia page the other day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_quackery

Basically can be summed up as 'we're not quite sure what radiation does but its obviously a health benefit'

I particularly like this thing:

which is a pot specifically designed to irradiate your drinking water


Brilliant

DNova posted:

It makes me wonder what we do today that in 50 years will seem too stupidly absurd to be true.

KozmoNaut posted:

Probably wi-fi or cellphones.

Pham Nuwen posted:

We are literally putting radium up our assholes here.

Monkey Fracas posted:

When the X-Ray was in it's infancy as a technology people would have parlor parties where they would gently caress around with unshielded X-Ray machines, exposing themselves to untold amounts of radiation.

"Look! I can see the bones in my hand! Now everyone else give it a go!"

DNova posted:

It makes me wonder what we do today that in 50 years will seem too stupidly absurd to be true.

DNova posted:

It makes me wonder what we do today that in 50 years will seem too stupidly absurd to be true.

DNova posted:

It makes me wonder what we do today that in 50 years will seem too stupidly absurd to be true.

spog posted:

Fozaldo posted:

Speaking of these why has it taken so long for cordless charging to come about? Induction has been understood for a very long time so what is so hard about using a coil to induce a current in another coil in a phone to charge a battery?

joat mon posted:

How, with what, and why?
Not kinkshaming, just confused (apparently we are all literally doing it)

Pham Nuwen posted:

I was just pointing out that the radiation from cell phones and wifi is incredibly harmless compared to actual ionizing radiation. All the cell phone will do is potentially warm your body very very slightly when in use.