#technology (2) – onsuggest

How Alan Turing and His Fellow Codebreakers Broke the Nazis’ “Unbreakable” Enigma Code

There was a time when you could just go out and buy an Enigma machine. In the early nineteen-twenties, any organization with a need to keep its communications secret could order a few of those brand-new devices from Germany and rest assured that any messages encoded using them would be safe from prying eyes. It […]

Open Culture Tech · EN

The Cable that Changed the World: How Instant Global Communication Began in 1858

The word wireless is going the way of computerized and portable, and for much the same reasons. We no longer regard wireless devices that require no physical connections to anything else as marvels, but as something close to necessities. But our age, with its increasingly common assumptions that information just travels through the air, owes its existence […]

Open Culture Tech · EN

300 Years Before ChatGPT, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels Imagined Machines Writing Books and Producing Knowledge (1726)

The printing press was invented in the middle of the fifteenth century, and it’s been downhill for the written word ever since. Even before then, arguments that the volume of writing being done far outstripped the value of that writing surely weren’t unheard of. Whatever the era, the most incisive remarks on the apparent victory […]

Open Culture Tech · EN

The Strange and Brilliant Inventions of Nikola Tesla

Even before the success of the electric car company that now bears his name, Nikola Tesla was a widely respected historical figure. Often, that respect could be based on surprisingly scant knowledge of the man’s life and accomplishments. Didn’t he do something with electricity? Wasn’t he involved in some kind of rivalry with Thomas Edison? […]

Open Culture Tech · EN

David Byrne’s New Book Explores the Strange Afterlife of Good Ideas: From Vermeer’s Paintings to Roman Concrete & Dark Matter

David Byrne will always be most widely known as the co-founder and frontman of Talking Heads. That may count among the greatest possible achievements for any artist — to the minds of many an Open Culture reader, at least — but it must occasionally frustrate the man himself. Talking Heads broke up 35 years ago, […]

Open Culture Tech · EN

Doctor Who’s Tom Baker Plays Douglas Adams’ Digital “Agent” in the AI-Predicting Hyperland (1990)

Cast your mind, if you will, back to the year 2020. It now feels like a different time, what with the spreading COVID-19 pandemic and the heated sociopolitical battles being waged online, and indeed in the (socially distanced) streets. That spring, we featured here on Open Culture an amusing retro-technological diversion called Hyperland. First broadcast on BBC2, […]

Open Culture Tech · EN

In 1897, London’s Lampposts Dispensed Hot Coffee, Tea, and “Fluid Beef”

Any reader of Victorian literature will wonder how much a ha’penny was actually worth in those days. For a little more than a year at the very end of that period, it could buy you a cup of coffee, cocoa, milk, tea, or “fluid beef” — which would pour out of a lamppost on the […]

Open Culture Tech · EN

The Early Years of Electronic Pop: The Moog Craze, Psychedelic Experiments, and More

There’s a decent chance you’ve heard at least a couple of tracks from Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach. But when was the last time you put on Switched-On Rock, Switched-On Country, Switched-On Santa, or Switched-On Bacharach? More likely than not, you’ve never even heard of those other albums, which have nothing to do with Carlos and […]

Open Culture Tech · EN

Omnibot Reborn: Giving a 1984 Robot Butler the Brain It Was Promised

In 1984, Tomy sold a toy robot that promised a domestic future it couldn’t quite deliver. Forty years later, a maker in Miami gave it vision, a voice, and just enough intelligence to finally pull it off. The post Omnibot Reborn: Giving a 1984 Robot Butler the Brain It Was Promised appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers .

MAKE Magazine · EN

Udderly Fantastic Game Controller

Make a squishy cow udder controller for your indie video game out of silicone and force-sensitive resistors, so players can squeeze teats to the beat! The post Udderly Fantastic Game Controller appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers .

MAKE Magazine · EN

OpenBDX Duck Robot: Learning to Waddle

Droid builders are reverse engineering Disney’s real-life “duck” robots. The post OpenBDX Duck Robot: Learning to Waddle appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers .

MAKE Magazine · EN

New products for new species, revisited

Ten years ago, Microsoft launched its Surface Studio, and it looked like Apple was going to offer its first touchscreen Mac. What has changed over that decade for Apple to do that now?