Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and I want to start by by by
Speaker 1: bringing everybody's mind back to um a famous quote from Plato. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is from Plato's republic booked book two. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this is a particular to the Joett translation. Uh. Quote,
Speaker 1: then I said, let us begin and create an idea,
Speaker 1: a state, and yet the true creator is necessity, who
Speaker 1: is the mother of our invention? And then um Joett
Speaker 1: also applied a more direct translation, which maybe quote our
Speaker 1: need will be the real creator. Oh so this is
Speaker 1: the origin of that phrase, necessity is the mother of
Speaker 1: invention exactly, which it sometimes is. But as we've discussed
Speaker 1: plenty of times on the show before, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of mothers of invention, and many of them are
Speaker 1: not quite necessity. Yeah. A lot of the show, as
Speaker 1: we discussed on the show, our devices and concepts that
Speaker 1: attempt to solve basic problems and the lives of the
Speaker 1: humans that created them. I think that is a very
Speaker 1: common thing to encounter. Uh and uh. But the same
Speaker 1: cannot be said for today's invention. Not exactly, because today
Speaker 1: we're discussing humanities centuries spanning quest to create a robot
Speaker 1: that eats and poops. And I would say it's not
Speaker 1: so much as a need as it is a want,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, But it is interesting when you start
Speaker 1: breaking it down, like, why if we didn't need, if
Speaker 1: there wasn't a definite need, say in the ancient world
Speaker 1: or or even in recent centuries, to have a robot
Speaker 1: that could eat a sandwich and then produce that sandwich
Speaker 1: to poop, then why did we seemingly want it? And
Speaker 1: and I and I and I do say that, you know,
Speaker 1: we did seemingly wanted. Individuals worked at this problem to
Speaker 1: varying degrees, either you know, dreaming it up, creating machines
Speaker 1: that at least produced the uh, you know the effects
Speaker 1: of this process, and then later on even you know,
Speaker 1: in recent years, have reached the point where we actually
Speaker 1: have machines capable of carrying this out, which we'll get
Speaker 1: to towards the end of the episode. Yeah, but one
Speaker 1: thing to think about is that a machine that poops, say,
Speaker 1: a pooping robot, is not just something that's for laughs.
Speaker 1: It actually does play, say, an intellectually serious role in history,
Speaker 1: and it engages with ideas that people have been pushing
Speaker 1: back and forth on for hundreds of years. And I'd
Speaker 1: say chiefly one of those ideas is the question of
Speaker 1: what makes something alive? And we'll revisit that throughout the episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, ultimately it comes down to this this
Speaker 1: very old quest, you know, this very old question. Can
Speaker 1: the inventor and when there with their secular ingenuity, can
Speaker 1: they rival the work of the gods? Can they create
Speaker 1: a machine that moves like a human being, that thinks
Speaker 1: like a human being, or even eats and oops like
Speaker 1: a human being. And this is there in some of
Speaker 1: the older myths about crafts people and inventors, like you know,
Speaker 1: the myth of Dadalus. One of the stories told about Dadalus.
Speaker 1: I think this also appears in a in a dialogue
Speaker 1: written by Plato, is the idea that Dadalus created these
Speaker 1: statues and because he was such a good craftsman, and
Speaker 1: because they were so like lifelike, they came to life.
Speaker 1: There is embedded in that almost like an idea that,
Speaker 1: you know, be careful because if you make a representation
Speaker 1: of a living form that's close enough to the real thing,
Speaker 1: it will actually just spontaneously come alive and walk out
Speaker 1: of your workshop, all right, And I mean in in
Speaker 1: a non literal way like that, that is true, Like
Speaker 1: the artificiality of the things we create and the likeness
Speaker 1: of human being can be can be very powerful, continues
Speaker 1: to be even more powerful given our abilities with the
Speaker 1: you know, say, digital media, we can create something that
Speaker 1: seems human and then if we believe in it enough,
Speaker 1: it almost makes it real. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, so
Speaker 1: it's one thing to create a work of art. I
Speaker 1: mean I think that's ultimately. Even though deadalust is in
Speaker 1: some ways considered to be like an inventor with the
Speaker 1: wings and stuff. Uh, the statues that he created, I
Speaker 1: think are generally thought of as works of art. Right.
Speaker 1: The idea was that they were so artistically adept, that
Speaker 1: they were so realistic in their depiction of the human form,
Speaker 1: there was danger of them coming alive and walking away.
Speaker 1: But there are also myths of actual like machines that
Speaker 1: that mimic human or lifelike forms in some way. Yeah, ultimately,
Speaker 1: way too many for us to to share on the
Speaker 1: show today, but just a few examples that that come
Speaker 1: to mind. There's, of course, Alberta's Magnus Um, you know,
Speaker 1: who lived nine through twelve eighty um, who was also
Speaker 1: known as a doctor Universalis and doctor expertus uh and
Speaker 1: and later he was made a saint. But he was
Speaker 1: said to have an android to have this again, this
Speaker 1: thing that you know deta else are kind of vague,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like something in the likeness of a
Speaker 1: human that had some sort of mechanism to its movement
Speaker 1: that that allowed it to lean into this lifelike nature.
Speaker 1: You know. I think we can safely dismiss the idea
Speaker 1: that he had a walking, talking robot in his in
Speaker 1: his laboratory or at the end that was created via
Speaker 1: technology or magic, because there are a lot of stories
Speaker 1: about Magnus. But I would say it's not impossible that
Speaker 1: some of these more ancient figures or even medieval figures,
Speaker 1: had had some kind of automata that had limited functionality,
Speaker 1: in that they might have had internal gears and clockwork
Speaker 1: mechanisms that by you know, turning a crank or by
Speaker 1: operating bellows or somehow putting energy into the system would
Speaker 1: allow it to enact movements through the you know, the
Speaker 1: robotic articulation kind of things. That could be somewhat life like,
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't be walking around talking, but might you know,
Speaker 1: you might have an automaton in the ancient world that
Speaker 1: has gears inside that allow it to move its arms
Speaker 1: and stuff. Right, we we did a whole episode of
Speaker 1: stuff to bling your mind on Talos, the mythical automaton.
Speaker 1: It would stalk the shores and throw boulders at robots
Speaker 1: created by Harvestus that would throw boulders at ships, um
Speaker 1: and and certainly this creature never this thing never walked
Speaker 1: the earth, but you can imagine where it might. It
Speaker 1: was either inspired by some of the manufacturing techniques that
Speaker 1: were employed to create similar statues, or it was based
Speaker 1: in some way on you know, mild automatons that were
Speaker 1: demonstrated by proficient individuals. And there were some strikingly proficient
Speaker 1: machines in the ancient world. I mean, we can't lose
Speaker 1: sight of that. Like the anti Cithero mechanism is an
Speaker 1: astronomical calculator. It's essentially a an analog computer that is
Speaker 1: made by different sized gears that fit together. That was
Speaker 1: from you know, I think it was the second or
Speaker 1: third century BC or something like that. Uh, that is
Speaker 1: discovered in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean. This was, you know,
Speaker 1: a really complex clockwork mechanism that calculated the positions of
Speaker 1: objects in the sky. And if the ancients could build
Speaker 1: stuff like that, it's not at all inconceivable that they
Speaker 1: could build basic automata in human like forms that could
Speaker 1: you know, move their body parts and stuff. A couple
Speaker 1: of other examples of of older tales of such creations.
Speaker 1: King Solomon is said in some accounts to have had
Speaker 1: had a throne with mechanical animals on it. Oh, is
Speaker 1: that where the Marilyn Manson title comes from? What dope throne?
Speaker 1: No dope throw and that's electrical straight, no mechanical animals.
Speaker 1: Isn't that a? Oh? Yeah, I guess it is? Sorry
Speaker 1: getting my my albums confused their um In either case,
Speaker 1: I don't think either band actually had a at a
Speaker 1: throne on par with King Solomon's. Uh, there's another there's
Speaker 1: actually um an individual by the name of Zoe Muwang
Speaker 1: fifth centuries of dynasty ruler who is said to have
Speaker 1: had a mechanical engineer. And I've also read similar stories
Speaker 1: of Luban from the same time period. Luban, of course,
Speaker 1: would also also deified as a know, a god of
Speaker 1: of engineering, carpentry, etcetera. But in a lot of these
Speaker 1: affect these older accounts, you know, myth mingles with history, Um,
Speaker 1: A great deal becomes obviously exaggerated. Um. And Albertus Magnus,
Speaker 1: for all his interests, was not an actual magician. And
Speaker 1: it seems an essential truth that throughout human history, engineers, inventors, artists,
Speaker 1: and technicians have experimented with automata. You know, we're driven
Speaker 1: to reproduce images of the human form, and then we
Speaker 1: take it a step beyond an attempt to bring them
Speaker 1: to life. And this is of course part and parcelto
Speaker 1: to one of humanity's oldest storytelling mediums, puppetry. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I hadn't thought about it like that. But
Speaker 1: a puppet, in a way is an extremely crude automaton.
Speaker 1: It is a figure that is powered by some kind
Speaker 1: of external force applied. It removed through the strings or whatever,
Speaker 1: through wires, or even just directly with the human hands. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, and sometimes there's not even this removal. But
Speaker 1: but we were bringing life to the inanimate and making
Speaker 1: the inanimate animate. Uh. And and this goes back you know,
Speaker 1: at least four thousand years through human history. But it's
Speaker 1: impossible really to say when puppetry really began, because ultimately
Speaker 1: any piece of witter stone transformed into into the likeness
Speaker 1: of a human or an animal could be quote unquote
Speaker 1: brought to life through minor or even crude puppetry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess in some ways, it's like the advancement
Speaker 1: of the of the automaton. How advanced we think it
Speaker 1: is and how we react to it is based on
Speaker 1: how well hidden the deliveries of the power operations of
Speaker 1: its body parts are, right, like how well hidden the
Speaker 1: mechanisms are, and how much it just looks like it
Speaker 1: op rates on its own force from the inside. Right.
Speaker 1: But but yes, and no, though right, because um, from
Speaker 1: as far as puppetry is concerned, puppetry can still be
Speaker 1: very convincing when you have very visible puppeteers. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's still a style that's employed uh today, and you
Speaker 1: can still um, you know, part of it is the
Speaker 1: suspension of disbelief. But the puppetry, the puppet puppet can
Speaker 1: still become real. But yeah, to whatever degree you hide that,
Speaker 1: to whatever degree, then it becomes uh seemingly or even
Speaker 1: purely mechanical with the humans standing off to the side.
Speaker 1: You know, that can only you know, enhance the effect.
Speaker 1: But but just in terms of of picking up a
Speaker 1: likeness of a being or a creature and then moving
Speaker 1: it and making it seem like it's alive, I mean
Speaker 1: you can. You can look at some of the oldest
Speaker 1: evidence we have of such likenesses, such as the venus
Speaker 1: of Whole Fells from what four between forty thousand and
Speaker 1: thirty five thousand years ago. Oh, there's evidence that this
Speaker 1: was a puppet. No, no, there's no evidence that I've
Speaker 1: seen it was a puppet. It's it's like if you
Speaker 1: have something like this, so you have something like the
Speaker 1: likeness of the lion man that we discussed loan loan
Speaker 1: mention from stuff to blow your mind. It's it's one.
Speaker 1: It really makes me think to imagine people picking this
Speaker 1: up and brandishing it for the first time, and you know,
Speaker 1: really and and and this combination of forms making their
Speaker 1: minds work and summoning new ideas about what's what's possible
Speaker 1: and and how it relates to the human condition. But
Speaker 1: then all one has to do then is to to
Speaker 1: move the lion man around a little bit. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it comes to life in some level, and then
Speaker 1: how does that change the message? Yeah, yeah, So you
Speaker 1: can think about the different um levels of animation and
Speaker 1: articulation within representational art throughout history. So first you might
Speaker 1: have had cave paintings that are fixed on a wall
Speaker 1: and don't move. And then you might have had something
Speaker 1: like the Venus or like the Lowan Menh which is
Speaker 1: a standalone gurine that you could meet's stiff and ridge
Speaker 1: it on its own, but you can move it around
Speaker 1: with your hand like kids do with their toys, you know,
Speaker 1: they act out little scenes. And then beyond that you
Speaker 1: can have articulated figurines with independently moving body parts. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's like the next step. And then the thing beyond that,
Speaker 1: of course, would be to make those body parts move
Speaker 1: at a distance or with some kind of hidden power
Speaker 1: without you having to pose them with your fingers. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So we could go on for quite some time talking
Speaker 1: about like the history of creating these likenesses and do
Speaker 1: varying degrees that we bring them to life, sometimes with
Speaker 1: things that don't even physically interact with them in a
Speaker 1: traditional sense, such as lighting effects, the effects of candle
Speaker 1: or firelight on on statues and whatnot. But ultimately we
Speaker 1: want to fast forward a bit. We want to go
Speaker 1: all the way up into the eighteenth century, eighteenth century Europe.
Speaker 1: We want to talk about the work of Jacques devoca Saw. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think we should take a quick break and then
Speaker 1: when we come back we can dive further in. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, and uh, you know, I hope you stuck
Speaker 1: with us, because now we're going to get into the
Speaker 1: story of the Defecating Duck. Right, So this is the
Speaker 1: work of Jacques Devocasson, who was a French automaton maker
Speaker 1: who lives seventeen o nine to seventeen eighty two. And
Speaker 1: Robert we both read an excellent essay about Vocasson and
Speaker 1: some some of his contemporaries called the Defecating Duck or
Speaker 1: the Ambiguous Origin Origins of Artificial Life, and this was
Speaker 1: published in Critical Inquiry in two thousand three, written by
Speaker 1: Jessica Riskin, who is a professor of history at Stanford
Speaker 1: and she's written extensively about the historical scientific debate about
Speaker 1: what makes something alive, including in a book called The
Speaker 1: Restless Clock, which I was reading about and reading some passages,
Speaker 1: from which is University of Chicago, Press, sixteen. But for Riskin,
Speaker 1: Vocason is a so as a maker of automata, he
Speaker 1: plays an important role in the history of this debate
Speaker 1: about what it is that makes living things special, what
Speaker 1: makes something alive? And this historical conflict has been between
Speaker 1: people who on one side thought living things were sort
Speaker 1: of passive machines that were designed to work a certain
Speaker 1: way and could be understood by their movements pretty much
Speaker 1: entirely except for the fact that they had been you know,
Speaker 1: they might have like a divine spark or an animating
Speaker 1: life essence. Uh, and that this uh, this point of
Speaker 1: view is typified by Descartes, right, who famously thought that
Speaker 1: animals were machines. Yeah. If you're approaching everything from a
Speaker 1: very biomechanical standpoint like this, then uh, it seems completely
Speaker 1: possible to reverse engineer uh, the animal, Yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, you've got people like Leibnitz
Speaker 1: who thought that animals were what Leibnitz called organisms the
Speaker 1: you know, that was a word of his coinage, meaning
Speaker 1: self organizing, self changing machines. So we might still think
Speaker 1: of them in term of machinery, but having all of
Speaker 1: these these self actualizing potentials and irreducible parts. And so
Speaker 1: the one interesting thing that risk And points out is
Speaker 1: that the idea of living things as clockwork machines was
Speaker 1: actually considered relatively acceptable theologically at the time. And say,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, eighteenth century Christian Europe. It's sort of
Speaker 1: fit with the idea somewhat in vogue at the time
Speaker 1: of God as an ultimate watchmaker who fashioned an exquisite
Speaker 1: clockwork universe by ingenious design and set it going. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: once again, using like technology being the metaphor we use
Speaker 1: to then reinterpret our our myths and our legends and
Speaker 1: our religions. Yeah. But Jacques de vocus On, so he's
Speaker 1: he's in this world, right, Yeah, yeah, So focus On
Speaker 1: lived in a time of clockwork wonders and rapidly advancing technology.
Speaker 1: He was the tenth son of a glove maker, and
Speaker 1: so you know, as one might expect, he grew up
Speaker 1: poor but around a lot of gloves, lot of gloves,
Speaker 1: and he's tenth in line to you know, to work
Speaker 1: the shop. But he dreamt of becoming a clockmaker, and
Speaker 1: he was fortunate enough to study under the Jesuits and
Speaker 1: coupled his clockwork ambitions with these new mysteries that came
Speaker 1: into his life, the mysteries of religion and this evolving
Speaker 1: understanding of health and human anatomy that is inevitably based
Speaker 1: in this kind of biomechanical vision of what life is. Okay,
Speaker 1: so he's got some knowledge of like clockwork and gears
Speaker 1: and how you know, all these different little parts can
Speaker 1: fit together to move things at a distance and channel
Speaker 1: power in different directions. Right, So he ends up creating
Speaker 1: a number of different automata and uh, and he comes
Speaker 1: to excel in the creation of what we're known at
Speaker 1: the time as philosophical toys. These were amusements, you know,
Speaker 1: mechanical clockwork amusements. They were also supposed to make you think,
Speaker 1: like the Billy bigmouth bass. Well, it sings, but it
Speaker 1: also makes you think, well, like what if a fish
Speaker 1: could sing? I'm not sure what a really good example
Speaker 1: I guess this should he take me to the river.
Speaker 1: Don't even know if we have purely philosophical toys anymore.
Speaker 1: Perhaps some more toy collectors out there listening can can
Speaker 1: chime in. But I mean the idea is that this
Speaker 1: would be a device that was brought out and demonstrated. Uh,
Speaker 1: you would even pay to see it. You know, you
Speaker 1: would go to see this Mechanici's philosophical toy in action,
Speaker 1: and you would marvel at what seemed was possible with
Speaker 1: the technology. And then ideally this would lead to a
Speaker 1: great deal of thought and introspection on what it is
Speaker 1: telling you about the natural world, about the human condition, etcetera. Really,
Speaker 1: in a way, it's like in a pre motion picture age. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, what what kind of of mechanical object could
Speaker 1: convey all the feelings you end up feeling from stay
Speaker 1: watching Blade Runner. I do think there's some things kind
Speaker 1: of like philosophical toys today. I think of machines. I
Speaker 1: can't remember where I saw this, but you know, there's
Speaker 1: like the the type of toy that is a an
Speaker 1: electronic machine that has an it's a box with an
Speaker 1: open button in a close button, and if you press
Speaker 1: the open button, it opens and a little hand comes
Speaker 1: out of the box and presses the clothes button and
Speaker 1: goes back inside and it closes up. It just kind
Speaker 1: of a philosophical toy. It's like it's amusing for a moment,
Speaker 1: but it also maybe asks you. Maybe it causes you
Speaker 1: to ask questions about like what what is the role
Speaker 1: of a machine? Does this? Does this machine do something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there are also various like certainly not mechanical objects,
Speaker 1: but various like puzzle box scenarios that because I want
Speaker 1: to think, I don't know what the name for this is.
Speaker 1: But the little like the little folding boxes that just
Speaker 1: keep folding back. Um, I'm not sure which you mean. Generally,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll find them with with images on the sides
Speaker 1: of them, and you kind of open them up and
Speaker 1: then you open them up a second way. And I mean,
Speaker 1: it all makes sense. You can one could certainly describe
Speaker 1: it and plan it out, uh, you know, geometrically, But um,
Speaker 1: I when I encounter them, I'm still like caught up
Speaker 1: in the illusion of the thing, Like it seems like
Speaker 1: there's some sort of weird infinity going on with it.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm familiar with what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I gotta have these. I'll have to bring one in.
Speaker 1: Like I said, maybe there's a there's a more descriptive
Speaker 1: term for them, I'm sure, but but basically just little
Speaker 1: gadgets where it's not immediately clear exactly how it's functioning,
Speaker 1: I mean to a certain extent of Rubik's cube. Is
Speaker 1: this right? Um? If you don't know the sort of
Speaker 1: the secret of the Rubik's cube and you encounter somebody
Speaker 1: who can quickly solve one and you cannot, it's it's astounding,
Speaker 1: like how is that working? How? How are these things
Speaker 1: even moving around? Uh? And of course this to come
Speaker 1: back around to, you know, the idea of puzzle boxes,
Speaker 1: I mean reminded of course of the lament configurations, which
Speaker 1: well it leave in the lore of the hell Raiser movies.
Speaker 1: It emerges from this same time period, the same this
Speaker 1: time period of clockwork wonders. Yeah, the Marshawn configuration or whatever, No,
Speaker 1: the limitation, the Marshawn boxes there, whatever it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it does ask you questions. It asks you the question, really,
Speaker 1: is the difference between pleasure and pain? Are you know,
Speaker 1: pleasure and pain indivisible? So? But to bring things back
Speaker 1: to the real world here, um, to focus on, to
Speaker 1: focus on uh, he built a pair of android waiters
Speaker 1: that served dinner and cleared a table. He also created
Speaker 1: a mechanical flute player that could play four play twelve
Speaker 1: different melodies. And that's more impressive than it seems because this, uh,
Speaker 1: the flute player that he built a risk and writes
Speaker 1: about this, it actually played the flute. I mean like
Speaker 1: it blew into the flute and did the finger motions
Speaker 1: on on a real flute. So that that's I don't know,
Speaker 1: more impressive than just like a music box that happens
Speaker 1: to be holding a flute. It was a machine that
Speaker 1: actually blows in and and plays the instrument. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then ultimately, this is also a page from the history
Speaker 1: of self playing instruments, which we alluded to a little
Speaker 1: bit in our episode on the saxophone. But I think
Speaker 1: it is the sort of thing we could easily do
Speaker 1: a whole episode on in the future, instruments that play
Speaker 1: themselves or uh, robots that play the instrument. What's the
Speaker 1: difference between to ultimately, Yeah, that's a good point. But
Speaker 1: so this gets us up to the seventeen thirties with
Speaker 1: focus on in which he achieves his true masterpiece, which
Speaker 1: is what the pooping duck. Of course, the pooping duck
Speaker 1: Linard de Gerratur, as Gabby Wood writes in Living Dolls,
Speaker 1: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. Uh,
Speaker 1: this was a gold plated copper duck that could quack, drink,
Speaker 1: raise up on its legs, and most famously of all,
Speaker 1: it would eat grain and then it would poop. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you would like get a piece of corn in
Speaker 1: your hand and feed it to the duck, and it
Speaker 1: would take it in its mouth, and then there would
Speaker 1: be a pause for a moment, and then the duck
Speaker 1: would poop something that looks convincingly like real duck poop. Right,
Speaker 1: And the way it was related to everyone is that
Speaker 1: the grain was passing through tubes to a chemical filled
Speaker 1: stomach and then through the duck's bowels. It's anus and
Speaker 1: mechanical sphincter um. However, according to to Reskin, the duck
Speaker 1: didn't actually really convert food into poop, no, sad to say.
Speaker 1: What it did was it just collected the grain in
Speaker 1: one tube and pushed out real excrement from a different one.
Speaker 1: So ultimately it's just it's another illusion. It's a mechanical trick.
Speaker 1: It's uh. It has far more in common with the
Speaker 1: Roman puppet god Glicon than it does with you know,
Speaker 1: the the the mythical wonders of Datalus. That's right. So
Speaker 1: it was a trick it wasn't actually performing biological digestion
Speaker 1: of food stuffs and and excreting. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that means that this historical object is uninteresting and more
Speaker 1: that it's completely a fraud. I mean again, it was
Speaker 1: presented as entertainments, presented the philosophical toy, so uh, part
Speaker 1: of it is like what does the machine appear to
Speaker 1: do and what does that make you think about the
Speaker 1: actual biological act exactly? Yeah, risk and talks about how
Speaker 1: it raises these questions. We'll get back to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. But I thought it was interesting this stuff
Speaker 1: you came up with about why why Vocasan might have
Speaker 1: been drawn to this project of a duck that poops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was brought up by by Gabby wood Um about
Speaker 1: how you know, it's suggest you know, looking at why
Speaker 1: a man of of of of his genius of Wisconsin
Speaker 1: Ginius was so enthralled by a mechanical duck that could defecate, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in addition to proving both popular and lucrative,
Speaker 1: so it apparently ended up scoring him a gig designing
Speaker 1: looms for the King of France. It did that, but
Speaker 1: also it's just sold it like it was it was
Speaker 1: gangbusters like it made money. This was people were lining
Speaker 1: up to see the direct the duck poop. People would
Speaker 1: pay to get in to see the display was the
Speaker 1: pooping duck in the middle, and it had a flute
Speaker 1: player on one side and a the the automatic flute
Speaker 1: player you know, the automata h and another type of
Speaker 1: instrument player on the other side. So you got two
Speaker 1: automatic instrument players on either side and the duck pooping
Speaker 1: in the middle. And risk in relates that people would
Speaker 1: pay like I don't remember exactly what the sum was,
Speaker 1: but she said it was like the sum to get
Speaker 1: in was about a normal work ker's week's worth of
Speaker 1: wages to get in to see this. But as for
Speaker 1: but there seems to be another layer here, and this
Speaker 1: is this is what Wood has to say. Quote focus on.
Speaker 1: It must be said. Was a man much preoccupied by
Speaker 1: the state of his body. He was plagued by an
Speaker 1: illness that had prevented him from eating. He suffered from
Speaker 1: a fistula of the anus. The mechanicians particular mention of
Speaker 1: the bowels anus and sphincter of the duck. Parts audiences
Speaker 1: may have preferred to imagine for themselves might be seen
Speaker 1: as a reflection of his own personal preoccupations. Wow, huh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean, ultimately, what is the creation of an
Speaker 1: automaton but an attempt to understand biology enough to replicate
Speaker 1: its miracles. And of course even today we're not there yet.
Speaker 1: The human body continually presents new puzzles and problems, big
Speaker 1: and small, annoying and life threatening, as if to remind
Speaker 1: us that we really don't have a perfect understanding or
Speaker 1: a perfect power over our physical bodies. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: whole thing about the way a tamata that tried to
Speaker 1: resemble living beings, You know that there are all these
Speaker 1: stories of creatures like this. There, of course lots of
Speaker 1: automaton automata modeled on humans, and then there are automata
Speaker 1: modeled on animals like ducks and swans and pigs and
Speaker 1: wolves and all these things from the time. Um, and
Speaker 1: that what they did was in trying to create these
Speaker 1: early robotic versions of the animals, they showed you what
Speaker 1: are the hard parts in making an animal work? So
Speaker 1: you could recreate movement. You know, you could use gears
Speaker 1: and little levers and stuff like that to make the
Speaker 1: legs move around and make the wings flap and all that,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't get it to do certain other things.
Speaker 1: You couldn't get it to respond to certain kinds of stimuli.
Speaker 1: You know, you couldn't get like an automatic dog to
Speaker 1: respond to commands or something. And you couldn't, of course
Speaker 1: get it to digest and poop. And then I want
Speaker 1: to read a passage from riskins essay quote. The defecating
Speaker 1: duck and its companions commanded such attention at such a
Speaker 1: moment because they dramatized two contradictory claims at once, that
Speaker 1: living creatures were essentially machines, and that living creatures were
Speaker 1: the antithesis of machines. It's masterful incoherence allowed the duck
Speaker 1: to instigate a discussion that's continuing nearly three centuries later.
Speaker 1: Well that that, in a way, it's the it's the
Speaker 1: sign of a great work of our right and summon
Speaker 1: such cognitive dissidence in the mind where it's like what
Speaker 1: I'm seeing is possible and impossible at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's both showing like, wow, you can create a
Speaker 1: mechanical duck. This convincing uh, And of course it was,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot that went into it. The
Speaker 1: ducks sat on top of this giant cabinet that had
Speaker 1: these big rollers and gears underneath that powered its movements. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so a lot went into this, but he did
Speaker 1: manage to create a duck that would flap its wings
Speaker 1: and do all the stuff that amazed people. But it
Speaker 1: was also partially a fraud. And both of these facts
Speaker 1: at the same time, about what it could do and
Speaker 1: what it couldn't do, both seemed significant and indicating an
Speaker 1: opposite directions about what life was. Was it essentially mechanical
Speaker 1: or not? And uh. Another thing I came across in
Speaker 1: risk In that I just wanted to read because I
Speaker 1: thought it was really interesting was that Edgar Allan Poe
Speaker 1: reacted to the defecating duck. Um. Uh. So Edgar Allan
Speaker 1: Poe had thoughts on the duck and on other automata,
Speaker 1: including Charles Babbage's difference engine, which was an early mechanical calculator. So,
Speaker 1: to read from risk In quote in eighteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe wrote admiringly of Voca Son's duck and
Speaker 1: then used it to examine the plausibility of Kimperland's chess player.
Speaker 1: And that's of course, the famous mechanical turk chess player
Speaker 1: that would uh, that would it was? It was an
Speaker 1: automaton that was like a dude in a turban who
Speaker 1: would play chess against people. Uh. And that also turned
Speaker 1: out to be a fraud, like the duck, because it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be just a machine, but it actually
Speaker 1: had real chess players inside controlling its movements. And so
Speaker 1: to pick up in risk and talk about it, girl
Speaker 1: and Poe uh the Kimberland's chess player, and of the
Speaker 1: other automaton then in the news Babbage's didn't difference engine.
Speaker 1: If the duck was ingenious, he wondered, quote, what shall
Speaker 1: we think of the engine of wood and metal which
Speaker 1: can compute astronomical and navigation tables? He decided he did
Speaker 1: believe in the calculating engine, because arithmetic, like digestion and
Speaker 1: flute playing, was quote finite and determinate. However, he did
Speaker 1: not believe in the chess playing automaton because he said
Speaker 1: chess was an uncertain process. Looking over the history of
Speaker 1: automatas since vocasan Poe tried to define a criterion of possibility,
Speaker 1: only determinate processes, he decided could be mechanized, and so
Speaker 1: this is kind of weird in multiple ways. Number One,
Speaker 1: he's he's Poe is partially right and partially wrong. He
Speaker 1: thinks the chess player is a fraud, which he was
Speaker 1: correct about, but he thinks the duck is real, that
Speaker 1: it was actually digesting, which of course he's also wrong about.
Speaker 1: But he actually of course says, well, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you could create an automatic adding machine. It seems to
Speaker 1: be the distinction he's making is that like a thing
Speaker 1: can't be automated if it has to respond continuously to
Speaker 1: stimuli from its environment, um and a risk. In actually
Speaker 1: writes that many thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century
Speaker 1: thought this way about the difference between machines and living things.
Speaker 1: Living things react to their environment, whereas machines do not.
Speaker 1: Machines are are sort of designed top down, and they're
Speaker 1: set going from the beginning, and they only execute their
Speaker 1: preprogrammed behaviors. And this is funny to us because of
Speaker 1: course we're constantly surrounded by machines that continually respond to
Speaker 1: ongoing inputs. Right. But then of course this is this
Speaker 1: is the the one of the big challenges and continuing challenges,
Speaker 1: and in robotics is like, it's what it's It's been
Speaker 1: one thing to create an automated machine or a robot
Speaker 1: that performs, say a dangerous but repetitive manufacturing task like
Speaker 1: welding up particular part if you keep it in a
Speaker 1: dark room away from people, um, except when it needs
Speaker 1: to be serviced. Obviously, it's another scenario entirely. To have
Speaker 1: that machine work alongside a human It's another, uh situation entirely.
Speaker 1: Then on top of that, to imagine this machine going
Speaker 1: out to someone's house and working on a car there
Speaker 1: in their environment. Yeah. Uh, you know, likewise, the idea
Speaker 1: of a machine like living in your home, learning about
Speaker 1: your environment and learning about your activities. Uh yeah, So
Speaker 1: I guess that's a good point. So I think Poe
Speaker 1: is obviously wrong that living things are responsive in a
Speaker 1: in an indeterminate way and machines aren't. But then again,
Speaker 1: there are limitations to the way that machines are responsive. Um.
Speaker 1: And this also actually is funny you mentioned industrial robots
Speaker 1: because this also you mentioned that this got focus on
Speaker 1: the duck got focus on a job re engineering the
Speaker 1: looms of France from the King of France. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: did go on to play an important role in attempts
Speaker 1: to automate some parts of the French textile industry. And
Speaker 1: this is an interesting question because coming up with automata
Speaker 1: like making a duck that poops or or that pretends
Speaker 1: to poop, and making human that tries to play the
Speaker 1: flute and all this. These experiments, in these philosophical toys
Speaker 1: and curiosities, are actually ways of investigating what parts of
Speaker 1: a process can be automated and what actually can't and
Speaker 1: has to be done by a human. So like, you
Speaker 1: can make an automaton that pretends to play chess, but
Speaker 1: you can't actually make an auto automaton in the you know,
Speaker 1: eighteenth century that knows what move to make in the game,
Speaker 1: and so and so. Figuring out stuff like this is
Speaker 1: crucial in automating factories. Like focus on figured out, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you can make a machine that does this part of
Speaker 1: the weaving process. You don't actually need a human for that,
Speaker 1: but you still do need a human for this other
Speaker 1: thing that's impossible to automate. Right in the same scenario
Speaker 1: continues to happen in manufacturing. You know, looking at at
Speaker 1: a given manufacturing process and saying, okay, what are the
Speaker 1: parts that a machine can do well. Which are the
Speaker 1: parts that where a human needs to be there to excel?
Speaker 1: What are the the areas where they can potentially work
Speaker 1: along beside each other using what you know, sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to as a cobot as opposed to a ropot um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're we're still fine tuning this process as
Speaker 1: the technology evolves. Yeah, exactly. Like one great example of
Speaker 1: one of these things that Focus Song found he could
Speaker 1: not automate when he was taking over the silk production,
Speaker 1: was this process of I guess it's getting the silk
Speaker 1: out of the worms, the initial you know, production of
Speaker 1: the silk thread. I mean, I think it's still kind
Speaker 1: of very similar. With a lot of textile related issues
Speaker 1: are reportedly more difficult to to automate. I've heard some
Speaker 1: more things about aspects of of like the like the
Speaker 1: cardboard and paper industry. UM, and every industry is going
Speaker 1: to have like different areas where machines can deaf really excel,
Speaker 1: where they can be helpful, and where still the role
Speaker 1: of human human labor and human minds are essential to
Speaker 1: the process. And that's not even getting into the overall
Speaker 1: u UM you know, supply chain issue. Because the factory,
Speaker 1: of course, is just one part of of the manufacturing world.
Speaker 1: You have to get raw materials to the factory or
Speaker 1: semiraw materials to the factory. You've got to get the
Speaker 1: finished product out, uh, you know, along the line and
Speaker 1: moving towards stores and uh and uh you know places
Speaker 1: of sale and uh and there's a whole I mean,
Speaker 1: they're some of that can be automated these days. We're
Speaker 1: looking at a very near future where some people hope
Speaker 1: to see the transport automated, where you have self driving
Speaker 1: trucks doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's we're still continuing to figure out how
Speaker 1: to put that all together. But will they ever fully
Speaker 1: automate human defecation? Can a robot ever do all of
Speaker 1: our pooping for us? Um? Can robots do pooping for us?
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. That's that's maybe that's maybe
Speaker 1: a long ways off. What about can they create our
Speaker 1: fat burgs for us? I'm sure they could. Well, let's
Speaker 1: just say that the age of actual pooping robots uh
Speaker 1: is here, and it has been here. And we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss more about that when we come back when
Speaker 1: we break all right, we're back. So we've been talking
Speaker 1: about Jacques Devocason and the digesting duck, and so we've
Speaker 1: been talking about some of the implications of the early
Speaker 1: attempts to create automata that would do lifelike processes like
Speaker 1: digestion and early types of intelligence as as purported to
Speaker 1: be realized by automata but maybe not actually realized. But
Speaker 1: now what this duck claimed to do, we do have
Speaker 1: some machines that can get into that territory digesting and pooping. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've remained fascinated with this, and I think a large
Speaker 1: part of it is that I ggestion is is unavoidable.
Speaker 1: It's an essential part of what we do. Is we've
Speaker 1: discussed and stuff to blow your mind, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's an amazing process and it's a it's an essential
Speaker 1: aspect of who and what we are. Each of us
Speaker 1: is essentially a giant earthworm, a tract that runs from
Speaker 1: our mouth to our anus that breaks down organic matter
Speaker 1: into a form that allows the removal of crucial nutrients
Speaker 1: and everything else, you know, arms legs, human culture. It's
Speaker 1: just an evolved flourish to enable this key function. Really, well,
Speaker 1: what we just some feathers on the digestive track exactly.
Speaker 1: So you know what, we might not want to think
Speaker 1: of ourselves like this. We may wish to focus on
Speaker 1: the more refined and less biological aspects of humanity. It
Speaker 1: is the core of what we are. And if you
Speaker 1: truly want to engage in the work of a creator
Speaker 1: or a creatrix deity, then you better be able to
Speaker 1: create a digestive system. And you know, it's ultimately a
Speaker 1: crazy task because digestion does so much. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a disassembly line of amazingly refined biology depending on
Speaker 1: physical systems we can't yet equal. Um, you know, just
Speaker 1: talking about like the fine motor movements that are involved
Speaker 1: in in moving matter through our intestines for yeah, like
Speaker 1: to create that mechanically or you know, or semi mechanically
Speaker 1: is daunting. Um. On top of this, nerve impulses are
Speaker 1: essential to the whole thing. I mean, there's there's communication
Speaker 1: going on through throughout your digestive system, and then there's
Speaker 1: all the chemical and microbial aspects of the process. So
Speaker 1: it's not it's obviously it's not just this mechanical or
Speaker 1: biomechanical process of digestion. Uh, you know, our the their
Speaker 1: chemicals involved, there are microbial inhabitants are involved in the process,
Speaker 1: and then the end result needs to be energy, you know,
Speaker 1: for the machine, uh, you know, to to really digest
Speaker 1: it has to be able to draw energy out of it,
Speaker 1: usable energy out of the process. Otherwise is it really
Speaker 1: better than the duck? Now that is a philosophical toy.
Speaker 1: It makes you ask that question. Is just turning food
Speaker 1: into poop but not getting any energy out of it
Speaker 1: necessarily a lesser scientific accomplishment than actually drawing usable energy
Speaker 1: from it. Well we'll get back to that for sure,
Speaker 1: but but let's start with something else. Let's start with
Speaker 1: taste for example. Okay, I mean taste is a vital
Speaker 1: aspect of digestion. Yes, I mean, if you stop and
Speaker 1: think about it for a second, it is gustatory perception.
Speaker 1: And granted, the human condition complicates everything, and it certainly
Speaker 1: complicates taste, but it's essentially they're along with smell to
Speaker 1: help us evaluate what we're considering digesting. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a taste and smell or or chemo sensitive or chemo
Speaker 1: receptor senses. You know, there are chemistry set of the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so here's an area though where there's there's long
Speaker 1: been a necessity, uh, you could say, for a machine
Speaker 1: that can taste food. I mean, kings, queens and other
Speaker 1: powerful individuals have long needed a way to determine if
Speaker 1: food and drink might be poisoned before they consume it.
Speaker 1: That's where the goblets of certain materials come in, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about this and stuff to aboil your mind,
Speaker 1: say goblets made from rhino horn that seeming depending on
Speaker 1: who you're talking to, seems like they may have um
Speaker 1: reacted to certain poisons like frost up in the presence
Speaker 1: of certain chemicals and therefore might have worked, but they'd
Speaker 1: certainly I think be partially dissolved by like a strong alkaline. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh, and then on top of that, there's sort
Speaker 1: of like magical ideas associated with it, And certainly they
Speaker 1: were an anti poison magics employed throughout history. But one
Speaker 1: of the best ways to deal with it was always
Speaker 1: and still to a large extent still is to just
Speaker 1: have somebody else taste your food for you, taste your
Speaker 1: wine for you, somebody expendable. Yeah, and if they don't
Speaker 1: die or get get ill, then you know that it's
Speaker 1: probably okay. Um, Jeffrey ate the wings and looks like
Speaker 1: we're good to go. And Uh, one of the crazy
Speaker 1: things is that, yeah, this is still very much something
Speaker 1: that is used in the world. In fact, yeah, there
Speaker 1: are still food tasted So I was reading an interesting
Speaker 1: Snoops article about this, and they pointed out that the
Speaker 1: White House the apparently still uses food tasters, or at
Speaker 1: least there's definite proof that they use them. Under President
Speaker 1: Barack Obama, there were several incidents. Uh, that's definitely stated
Speaker 1: or supported the fact that he used one, both domestically
Speaker 1: and abroad, like for instance, not being able to participate
Speaker 1: in a meal because the food tester wasn't there. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's sort of thing. Um. This of course raises a
Speaker 1: question does the current US president use the food taster?
Speaker 1: And I've seen I was looking around trying to find
Speaker 1: any confirmation. There are a lot of articles about concerned
Speaker 1: with what sorts of foods the current president eats, but
Speaker 1: I saw no discussion of whether he employed or that
Speaker 1: the Secret Service employed and a food taster. And how
Speaker 1: does that change if you're not talking about food prepared
Speaker 1: on the premises by a chef or whatever. But maybe
Speaker 1: imagine a president we're eating a big mac that was
Speaker 1: procured from a McDonald's franchise location, were brought in in
Speaker 1: a bucket of KFC. Yeah, um, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I couldn't see any sources on that, but it seems
Speaker 1: like if it were, if we're definitely say a secret
Speaker 1: service uh standard during the previous presidency, it stands to
Speaker 1: reason that it may still be a practice today. Uh
Speaker 1: and understandably so um uh. One wonders though, if, if,
Speaker 1: if one can really roll with that much KFC. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but at any rate, it is interesting to
Speaker 1: you know, to drive home that you know it is advanced.
Speaker 1: Is the technology may have gotten Um, you know, we're
Speaker 1: still not to the point where we're going to send
Speaker 1: the human food tasters home when we're put putting you know,
Speaker 1: high profile lives on the line. This seems wrong, Like
Speaker 1: I mean, I understand the kings and queens of yester centuries,
Speaker 1: uh saying Okay, here's Jeffrey, the expendable food taster. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if he'd eyes, you know, he can taste
Speaker 1: it and make sure there's no poison. That that seems
Speaker 1: wrong today. Should shouldn't we have a machine that can
Speaker 1: test for poison without having to subject a real human
Speaker 1: being to the potential dangers of poisoning. Well, we have
Speaker 1: technologies um that have that have that have been in
Speaker 1: in the work. So it was twelve years ago that
Speaker 1: an electro mechanical sum elier was debuted in Japan and
Speaker 1: it made headlines for identifying human flesh is bacon for instance.
Speaker 1: UM And of course it looked kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: you would imagine a cute um like anime robot looking,
Speaker 1: but it was the work of any C System Technologies
Speaker 1: and my university, and it was designed to deal explicitly
Speaker 1: with cheese and wine. But the really cool thing about
Speaker 1: him is that, you know, is that we had There
Speaker 1: are other technologies that can test food that can see,
Speaker 1: you know, what were the contents, but they generally involved
Speaker 1: destroying the food, which I guess is kind of what
Speaker 1: a food taster does. They have to at least take
Speaker 1: a bite out of that presidential big Mac to determine
Speaker 1: to what extent it is poison. Well, I mean to
Speaker 1: think about the way that it would be difficult for
Speaker 1: you to actually determine the taste of most foods just
Speaker 1: by say, licking them. You really need to sort of
Speaker 1: chew them up and feel them throughout your mouth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the crazy thing about this is that it was
Speaker 1: a scanner. It was, as it was described in Nature,
Speaker 1: it as a photonic tasting system. So again it means
Speaker 1: that you could, uh, it was non invasive, and then
Speaker 1: you could you could just point it at wine or
Speaker 1: cheese and and get get a sense of what it's
Speaker 1: nutritional data might be or what its chemical composition might be. However,
Speaker 1: looking around, I couldn't find much info on where this
Speaker 1: area of research has lead. But at any rate, it
Speaker 1: has a lot of potential to it as as just
Speaker 1: a tool for enforcing food safety and and maybe maybe
Speaker 1: getting to the point, uh later down the line where
Speaker 1: there'll be some sort of maybe handheld device and you
Speaker 1: can essentially you know, Star Trek, you're a big mac,
Speaker 1: and see if it has been compromised. All right, So
Speaker 1: if our voices sound a little bit weird now, or
Speaker 1: sound any different, it's because we just had to hop
Speaker 1: into another studio. But here we are, we're still going.
Speaker 1: So we just talked about this idea of like photonic
Speaker 1: tasting of foods. Obviously that kind of tasting is a
Speaker 1: little bit different than the idea of tasting for poison,
Speaker 1: which we were talking about a minute ago, but it's
Speaker 1: also very different from the overall digestive process, right right,
Speaker 1: And as we get into digestion, I want to discuss
Speaker 1: something that is outside the strict domain of just science
Speaker 1: and gets more into this place where art meets science.
Speaker 1: And it's the work of a Belgian artist by the
Speaker 1: name of Vim Delvoy who created a series of Kloaca
Speaker 1: machines over the years, and each of these is a
Speaker 1: kind of mechanical and chemical disassembly machine for food. So
Speaker 1: he consulted gastro intestine experts as well as plumbers and
Speaker 1: rolled out the first version just like Cloaca one in
Speaker 1: two thousand and he's kept going with these. Uh, like
Speaker 1: the most current version that We've been multiple iterations of Cloaka,
Speaker 1: but the most current version is active right now in
Speaker 1: the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. And you
Speaker 1: can even have a nest cam up so you can
Speaker 1: you can go online if you look up them Delvo
Speaker 1: that's w I M D E L V O y E. Uh.
Speaker 1: Look up his website, there's all of his works on there.
Speaker 1: Has a pretty good website and uh. And then there's
Speaker 1: a link to this live video and you can watch
Speaker 1: this machine uh slowly uh turning food into poop, slowly
Speaker 1: digesting food. Uh. If you know what you were looking at,
Speaker 1: you would just assume that it's just some random piece
Speaker 1: of machinery, perhaps in a factory somewhere. There's nothing particularly
Speaker 1: dynamic or night marrick about it. But yet it is
Speaker 1: a mechanical digestion system. So part of his whole artistic
Speaker 1: vision here is that this machine, the Kloec machine, is
Speaker 1: essentially useless. All it does is turned food into poop
Speaker 1: without generating anything worthwhile out of the process. And his
Speaker 1: argument here is that thus two is the modern world,
Speaker 1: all consuming, all pooping, and producing nothing of real value
Speaker 1: in the process. Because again this is art. But he's
Speaker 1: but but it's it's it's more than just you know what.
Speaker 1: What he's created here does have a lot in common
Speaker 1: with the digesting the defecating duck. Uh, you know there,
Speaker 1: except he's he's actually using a chemical process. There's a
Speaker 1: chemical and mechanical process taking place in kloeaca Um that
Speaker 1: is not there with the duck. But he has also
Speaker 1: created something that is something of a philosophical toy right
Speaker 1: that we're supposed to look at it, and he makes
Speaker 1: us think about about the traditions he's playing with here
Speaker 1: and the statement he's making about modern society, but makes
Speaker 1: us think in a slight different way because here the
Speaker 1: process of at least not the whole process of digestion,
Speaker 1: but at least the process of turning fresh food into
Speaker 1: fecal matter essentially is no longer one of these like
Speaker 1: great mysteries that can't be accessed by the mechanists. Right now,
Speaker 1: this one, we've got this part sort of figured out,
Speaker 1: though we still there's still maybe some things about digestion
Speaker 1: we don't fully have figured out. Oh yeah, and I'm
Speaker 1: not I don't mean to imply it is a perfect
Speaker 1: facsimile of human digestion, because there's a lot going on,
Speaker 1: but he is. He has created a reasonable bio mechanical
Speaker 1: facsimile of the of the process. And when you look
Speaker 1: at pictures of it, it looks like an assembly line.
Speaker 1: It looks like this, and depending on the lighting, some
Speaker 1: of the images are wonderful because it looks it looks
Speaker 1: like something out of the matrix, you know, um, with
Speaker 1: these like uh, these kind of containers hanging from this uh,
Speaker 1: this platform, and there's like even a small conveyor belt
Speaker 1: that I think is used at the very end. In
Speaker 1: some instances, the poop has been sold at the very
Speaker 1: end of it, Like this is the thing you can
Speaker 1: purchase as your souvenir of Cloaca. Does it come in
Speaker 1: a container? They just put it in your hands. I
Speaker 1: think it's in a container. Yeah, like uh uh and
Speaker 1: uh you know, and he has all like cool logos
Speaker 1: in line, Like there's the Cloaca logo that has kind
Speaker 1: of the it's not quite the Michelin man. It's Mr Clean,
Speaker 1: I guess. But he's like a genie with intestines. That's interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: But he then this isn't the only time that he's
Speaker 1: used um um technology in uh in his work. For instance,
Speaker 1: he also produced a project titled Chapelle and MoU Dam,
Speaker 1: which makes use of X ray technology. So he had
Speaker 1: X rays taken up individuals engaged in various sex acts
Speaker 1: so that the X rays could then be transformed into
Speaker 1: stained glass cathedral windows. Okay, so that's this. I think
Speaker 1: this illustrates all One of the things I love about
Speaker 1: them Delvo is that he he seems like a character
Speaker 1: from a William Gibson novel, and I really loved that
Speaker 1: about him of a cyberpunk art rascal. Yeah yeah, But anyway,
Speaker 1: Kloaka is very much in the spirit of the pooping duck.
Speaker 1: But the next part of the equation, obviously, like where
Speaker 1: do we go from here, would be to consider the
Speaker 1: creation of machines that don't just turn food into poop,
Speaker 1: but they can potentially acquire food on in their own
Speaker 1: and then maybe even obtain energy from its meal, because
Speaker 1: that's ultimately that's something Cloaka is not doing. The cloak
Speaker 1: is not going out and grazing in the field. It
Speaker 1: is a machine that is fed, uh and then produces
Speaker 1: poop at the other end, Uh, it is not catching
Speaker 1: food on its own, and it is not you know,
Speaker 1: creating a energy out of what it is doing. It
Speaker 1: is not thriving on its meal. And that brings us
Speaker 1: to the echo bot and its various kin. So roboticists
Speaker 1: at Bristol Robotics Laboratory has been a great deal of
Speaker 1: time over the years developing robot predators that hunt down
Speaker 1: and eat living organisms, or could potentially hunt down and
Speaker 1: eat living organism. This sounds like a good project, Well, no,
Speaker 1: it is it is and then break all of this
Speaker 1: down into energy. Yeah, and I know it makes people
Speaker 1: think of various like terminator scenarios, but we're not talking
Speaker 1: about large predators that would say hunt down like adult
Speaker 1: mammals or like they're not going after deer. But for instance,
Speaker 1: they had an earlier project, slug bot product project where
Speaker 1: the thing would be that it would it would it
Speaker 1: would eat garden slugs and break them down for energy.
Speaker 1: And they've since they moved on to Ecobot two that
Speaker 1: would eat flies. They also explored the possibilities of plankton
Speaker 1: eating robot robots that would be you know, you know
Speaker 1: out in the ocean. Uh. And then the eco bat three.
Speaker 1: This was the world's first robot to exhibit true self sustainability.
Speaker 1: It boasted onboard fluid circulation and this robot was capable
Speaker 1: of operating within an enclosed environment for seven days by
Speaker 1: collecting its food and water from from like an arena
Speaker 1: environment that consisted of like liquid food in different dishes
Speaker 1: um and the The actual digesting is done by a
Speaker 1: series of microbial microbial fuel cells or m fcs. So
Speaker 1: bacteria consumes food and produces hydrogen atoms as a byproduct,
Speaker 1: the hydrogen goes into a fuel cell which generates electricity
Speaker 1: to power the robot plus uh, you know, pure water,
Speaker 1: which the robot then the essentially kind of drinks to
Speaker 1: keep itself from being dehydrated. I guess you could say
Speaker 1: the remaining biomass goes through the entire cycle once more
Speaker 1: before being eliminated. And then in the years since, they've
Speaker 1: moved on to ecobot four. That's the most current version
Speaker 1: of it, which is all about peering the bio the
Speaker 1: power requirements of various electronic applications, robotic or non robotic,
Speaker 1: with the power generated by the MFC stacks. And this
Speaker 1: is There are a lot of cool projects that the
Speaker 1: Bristle Robotics Laboratory is involved in, um a lot of
Speaker 1: them involving bio energy. For instance, they have one that
Speaker 1: is used using urine to power up a mobile phone
Speaker 1: via this microbial fuel cell. It demonstrates for the first
Speaker 1: time the charging of a commercially available mobile phone using
Speaker 1: microvial fuel cells fed with real human urine. So I mean,
Speaker 1: like in this, you know, we're kind of going beyond
Speaker 1: merely this absurd dream of wanting to create machines that
Speaker 1: do what humans do or pooh, what humans pooh? Uh
Speaker 1: is the case may be. But the getting into a
Speaker 1: situation where it's like, okay, if we couldn't if we
Speaker 1: can create something like digestion, like true digestion in a machine,
Speaker 1: like what are the various applications They're like, if you
Speaker 1: have a machine that essentially eats and produces uh energy
Speaker 1: for your cell phone, then that's that's wonderful. That's like,
Speaker 1: that's a potential real world application. Likewise, the idea of
Speaker 1: some sort of marine drone that doesn't have to be recharged,
Speaker 1: it just simply eats plankton, uh as if it were
Speaker 1: a you know, filter feeding whale or fish. And they
Speaker 1: they're working on other products to robert robots that decom
Speaker 1: pose artificial gills for robots in various applications for water
Speaker 1: clean up and wastewater management using these m f c
Speaker 1: s so uh. Their website is definitely worth checking out.
Speaker 1: If you go to a Bristol Robotics Lab dot com um,
Speaker 1: it'll give you a pretty good insight into like where
Speaker 1: we are and where we seem to be going with
Speaker 1: the possibility for digesting robots. So robots that do some
Speaker 1: something that is very similar to digestion and humans. Well,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting to see yet again how um a project,
Speaker 1: I mean, this happens throughout the history of technology, a
Speaker 1: project that began as a kind of you could say
Speaker 1: generously and intellectual exercise you could say ungenerously, just sort
Speaker 1: of like a pointless little display. Um. Either way, it
Speaker 1: has progressed in something that you could imagine being actually useful,
Speaker 1: like I imagine oh, I don't know, you know, as
Speaker 1: self powering sort of robots that that for it throughout
Speaker 1: the environment, say cleaning up litteral waste or detoxifying the
Speaker 1: environment and uh and sustaining themselves through you know, the
Speaker 1: normal kinds of biomatter that would be eaten by animals anyway, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's I guess the thing is with
Speaker 1: any technology, they're cascading effects, they're they're they're different applications
Speaker 1: that spin off from the core investigation. I mean, we
Speaker 1: see that one of the post notable examples is the
Speaker 1: space program, and it's often touted that, Yeah, even if
Speaker 1: you're not convinced about the necessity for human space travel
Speaker 1: and exploration of our our solar system. UM, which I
Speaker 1: want to stress that I think, I do think those
Speaker 1: are important exercises for for our species. But even if
Speaker 1: you're not totally on board with those, there are all
Speaker 1: these other technologies that spin out of that conquest and
Speaker 1: uh and many of those have very important real world,
Speaker 1: everyday applications that you can't always predict, right, And the
Speaker 1: unpredictable nature, I think is to the key. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: just because you can't think of a way that it's
Speaker 1: going to pay off, doesn't mean it's not going to
Speaker 1: pay off, right, Yeah, And just this kind of comes
Speaker 1: down to the basic One of the basic facts about
Speaker 1: scientific investigation in general is that you know, they're all
Speaker 1: sorts of studies out there that can be criticized with
Speaker 1: the whole shrimp on a treadmill criticism and saying, what,
Speaker 1: you know, this is ridiculous, what why are you testing
Speaker 1: for this? Why are you? Why are you? Why are
Speaker 1: you putting tax dollars into this sort of research just
Speaker 1: to find out you know, no, um, you know how
Speaker 1: fast it shrimp runs or whatever the criteria happens to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the time to criticize the study
Speaker 1: is if there's something wrong with its methodology. I mean,
Speaker 1: either if it's like unethical or something, or if you
Speaker 1: have reason to doubt that its results are sound. If
Speaker 1: you don't have those issues, then I don't know. I
Speaker 1: kind of hesitate to attack studies even that seem frivolous
Speaker 1: one way or another, because you don't exactly know how
Speaker 1: that knowledge might be applied. There might be things that
Speaker 1: the researchers have in mind that you don't realize, right,
Speaker 1: And if nothing else, they're contributing to our our overall
Speaker 1: knowledge of the natural world and uh and and pushing
Speaker 1: that that boundary, pushing that threshold. And we often don't
Speaker 1: know what lies beyond that threshold. But the next level
Speaker 1: of exploation of discovery will be you don't know what
Speaker 1: information might be useful to somebody in the future when
Speaker 1: facing a problem that we haven't even encountered yet exactly.
Speaker 1: All right, So does that do it for machines that poop?
Speaker 1: I think so? I mean, I'm sure we left some
Speaker 1: things out, you know that generally, like in terms of
Speaker 1: just looking at methods and technologies for breaking down organic matter. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's some other projects out there. Uh, these
Speaker 1: especially the echo bot program is probably one of the
Speaker 1: more notable ones, and also one of the more glamorous
Speaker 1: because you have you know, anytime you have discussion of
Speaker 1: a robot eating garden slugs, obviously that's gonna that's gonna
Speaker 1: to everyone's attention, that's going to garner some headlines. But
Speaker 1: I think this provides sort of a nice overall, especially
Speaker 1: to begin with something that is an invention that is
Speaker 1: not or a desire for an invention that is not
Speaker 1: born out of necessity, and exploring how it can come
Speaker 1: back around to something that that does satisfy some necessities
Speaker 1: or or attempts to satisfy some necessities in our world. Totally,
Speaker 1: this has been more interesting and more relevant to the
Speaker 1: history of technology than I would have imagined. But I
Speaker 1: do I do implore everyone the next time you're watching
Speaker 1: a robot movie, ask yourself, does this robot poop? Um? Well? Actually,
Speaker 1: you know what this does come up because I think
Speaker 1: it is still a part of our intuition that something
Speaker 1: about the chemical digestion process and the ability to sustain
Speaker 1: oneself on organic food matter is integral to our idea
Speaker 1: of what's alive. There's even a scene, um, do you
Speaker 1: remember the scene in the movie Ai where there is
Speaker 1: the robot child that's having trouble bonding with its family,
Speaker 1: and essentially the android wants he wishes he were a
Speaker 1: real boy, and he there's one scene where I think
Speaker 1: what he does is he tries to eat food, like
Speaker 1: he puts food into his mouth and choose it up
Speaker 1: and tries to swallow it, which, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: he's not good for him because he's a robot. But
Speaker 1: I think the implication is he sees that as like
Speaker 1: an essentially truly organic and human activity that he can't do,
Speaker 1: and if he could do, maybe that would make him
Speaker 1: a real boy. Yeah, yeah, this is This is something
Speaker 1: that has explored a bit on the uh the rather
Speaker 1: excellent British series Humans, which basically takes uh you know,
Speaker 1: an android ubiquitous android technology scenario and um and explores
Speaker 1: some interesting themes there while also commenting on various uh
Speaker 1: you know, current events and current problems and uh you know,
Speaker 1: such as the refugee crisis and so forth, and also
Speaker 1: just our general tendency to uh focus on mothering and
Speaker 1: treat people horribly for various reasons that you know, pertain
Speaker 1: to their their race, their ethnicity, their gender, their sex,
Speaker 1: their sexual preferences, etcetera. Uh, but but in that series,
Speaker 1: the at least some of the robots, perhaps all of them,
Speaker 1: have the ability to to eat human food and it
Speaker 1: goes into like a balloon like receptacle in their throat
Speaker 1: and upper chest, which then they could like they empty
Speaker 1: manually later like they take it back out of their
Speaker 1: throat and empty it into a you know, a sink
Speaker 1: or something. So the eating is merely like four appearances,
Speaker 1: it's like an aesthetic thing. Yeah, And I think and
Speaker 1: there are some cases where the robots are using it deceptively,
Speaker 1: but I think in general it's there because there was
Speaker 1: a there was a realization that humans want a human
Speaker 1: experience out of the machine that they've created in their
Speaker 1: own likeness, and a big part of that is being
Speaker 1: able to share a meal. You want to be able
Speaker 1: to go up to lunch with a friend exactly. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: anyone interested in a good robot viewing, I recommend show.
Speaker 1: I think three seasons have come out, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they get into issues regarding titological singularity. Um, then it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a it's a fun series. And
Speaker 1: then more to the point, it does make you think cool,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, Yeah, that's it for pooping ducks then,
Speaker 1: and uh we'll hope to join you next time. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, you can check out all the other episodes
Speaker 1: of Invention at invention pot dot com and we're always
Speaker 1: open up. We're always open to suggestions for the future,
Speaker 1: key and inventions. You would like us to cover new
Speaker 1: looks at past Invention episodes We've we've covered uh let
Speaker 1: us know. We've received some wonderful feedback from folks already.
Speaker 1: We've been adding things to the list and we hope
Speaker 1: to do uh cover some of those in the future.
Speaker 1: Definitely huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
Speaker 1: Tory Harrison and our guest producer today Maya Cole. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other to suggest to
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention
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