Introducing ChairPerson tm A Revolution in Committee Management  Ideal committee chair  Delegates authority  Special “Features” Occasionally, one leg falls off Refuses to write reports

“Seat of Power”

Technology 451: How to Make Your Own Mechanical Hound Tom Rebold, MPC Engineering Instructor

Technology 451  What role does Technology play in F451?  What was Bradbury’s inspiration for the Mechanical Hound?  Has anyone created a Mechanical Hound?  How can you build your own robots?

Sci-Fi vs Sci-Fact  A self perpetuating loop

Bradbury’s Mechanical Hound…  The mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the fire house.  Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber padded paws.

The Mechanical Hunter  “What does the Hound think about down there nights. Is it coming alive on us, really? It makes me cold.”  “It doesn’t think about anything we don’t want it to think.”  “That’s sad,” said Montag, “because all we put in it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that’s all it can ever know.” -- Fahrenheit 451, 1953

The beginning of goal- seeking machine behavior (1941) the first electric fire- control system

Norbert Weiner, 1894 – 1964 Founder of Cybernetics  Cybernetics or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948). Norbert Wiener Acclaimed one of the "seminal books... comparable in ultimate importance to... Galileo or Malthus or Rousseau or Mill", Cybernetics was judged by twenty- seven historians, economists, educators, and philosophers to be one of those books published during the "past four decades," which may have a substantial impact on public thought and action in the years ahead." -- Saturday Review

Cybernetics Is…  Math/Science of systems that have goals Using circular “feedback” loops of  sensing  comparing with goals  action  sensing … Communication systems, control theory Applied to Animals, Machines, Business, Government…anything that processes information

Is the Mechanical Hound a Cybernetic Hound?  Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the hound and let loose rats in the fire house areaway. Three seconds later the game was done, the rat caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentle paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine.

After the War…  Scientists/Engineers seek funding to apply wartime cybernetic techniques to broader problems  Ideas developed for military use describe: Living organisms Control and communication devices Human society  In terms of: Information, feedback, control

Other Developments in Robotics 1950 Alan Turing publishes Computing Machinery and Intelligence in which he proposes a test to determine whether or not a machine has gained the power to think for itself. It becomes known as the "Turing Test". Computing Machinery and IntelligenceTuring Test 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still premieres in theaters. The movie features an alien named Klaatu and his robot Gort.

Was this Bradbury’s Inspiration?  Gray Walter’s Tortoise ( )  Even organisms with extremely simple nervous systems could show complex and unexpected behavior  Steering motor on front wheel and driving on rear wheels  Two vacuum tubes for control  One photocell  One bump sensor

Surviving Technology – the irresistible allure  Fahrenheit 451 as a critique of cybernetics Humans subject to “control” thru media No books = no independent thought  Mildred’s case: “It doesn’t think about anything we don’t want it to think.” The ideal consumer—a mechanical human?  Clarisse: “I rarely watch the parlor walls, So I’ve lot’s of time for crazy thoughts.”

An unexpected bounty  As technology gets cheaper, the development of it gets more democratic  Technology as liberator

Start concocting your Mechanical Hound here 

Robotics at MPC:  Take ENGR 50 this Fall! 12 Fridays, 4 – 6:15 pm No pre-requisites Sign up sheet for notification

Underwater Robotics? MAST 205 ROV Design and Competition  Spring ’09! Join MPC’s yearly team entry into a national Underwater ROV competition

The Mechanical Hound Today  Military funding Big Dog as robotic pack mule for army  NASA developing E-nose for detecting poisonous gases on Space Station Dr. Amy Ryan, JPL   So far, all books have not been banned

References 1.Fire Control & Human-Computer Interaction 2.Cybernetics and New Cybernetics: History of Soviet Cybernetics: 4.The Essential Message: Claude Shannon and the Making of Information Theory