Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine

http://www.longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/

by alfredp • 16 years ago

81 23 16 years ago

longnow.org

TY• 16 years ago

Great article! It's been posted and discussed here several times before though:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723361

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191212

alfredp• 16 years ago

Oops didn't mean to dup! I came across it because of all the cloud computing stuff that's happening - and reminded me of when all the powerful computing came down in price. Just wanted to go back in time to see how people used up all the extra computing power.

bliss• 16 years ago

Thanks for reposting... It's new to me! I'm instantly thinking about IBM's cell processors and how much the connection machine parallel concepts fed into their design.

roundsquare2• 16 years ago

Seems like the kind of thing that is okay to repost, at least once in a while. Its not really "breaking news."

rbanffy2• 16 years ago

Otherwise, the site would be called "Hacker Breaking News", or (ouch) "Breaking Hacker News".

mark_h3• 16 years ago

Hard to believe this hasn't been posted before, but this is one of my favourite Feynman stories (collection of, really) ever. Absolutely magical.

(Worth re-visiting the other side of Thinking Machines too, I suppose: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Thinking-Machines.aspx)

gchpaco• 16 years ago

Do note the Ken Jones comment on that article basically repudiating the crude editorializing of the main article.

jbellis• 16 years ago

I couldn't find the comments section. Link?

mark_h3• 16 years ago

I hadn't read that, thanks. I'm glad it wasn't quite how it was made out, but it also makes it a bit sadder that they died.

mark_l_watson• 16 years ago

An old, but excellent article. I had the good fortune, in ancient history, to get some hacking time in on the first type of Connection Machine (the SIMD one). And the best part was, wait for it ..., was that you programmed it in *Lisp.

gruseom• 16 years ago

What were the distinctive things about *Lisp? I've heard of it but don't know much.

mark_h3• 16 years ago

There's a chapter in Hillis' thesis on it (which this re-posting has just prompted me to finally read): http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/14719

philh• 16 years ago

>Richard walked in, saluted, and said, "Richard Feynman reporting for duty. OK, boss, what's my assignment?" The assembled group of not-quite-graduated MIT students was astounded.

> After a hurried private discussion ("I don't know, you hired him..."), we informed Richard that his assignment would be to advise on the application of parallel processing to scientific problems.

> "That sounds like a bunch of baloney," he said. "Give me something real to do."

> So we sent him out to buy some office supplies.

I love this bit. There's the aspect that everyone mentions, how Feynman is happy to do something as seemingly menial as get office supplies, despite his qualifications.

But the students' reaction is also fun to think about. Like if a regular working guy was given a million dollars, and his first reaction was "man, what am I going to do with this?" It takes him a while to realise what new opportunities he has.

And then I imagine that Feynman recognises this reaction in them, and enjoys watching it. It's a form of good-natured teasing.

I don't know if the actual thought processes were anything like this. But I like to think they were.

jrockway• 16 years ago

Chores like this are a good time for multitasking. You can sit and stare out the window and think, or you can walk to the store and buy office supplies and think. In the second case, you've done two things at once; spent some time thinking, and got your office supplies.

My apartment is very clean because I like to do something while I am thinking. Cleaning involves no thought on its own, and it's nice to not see any messes. For me anyway.

ced• 16 years ago

The MIT seems like such a place to be for ambitious projects. Unfortunately I, like many others, attended a mediocre Canadian university because I didn't know any better. Questions for MIT alumni:

1. Is it still the mecca depicted in that kind of story?

2. Can you audit classes without being a MIT student, or do you need keycard access to even be on campus? Is it "culturally accepted"?

Incidentally, if anyone in Montreal is working on ambitious technical stuff, drop me a line.

rglovejoy• 16 years ago

MIT is an "open" campus, in the sense that anyone can enter the buildings and go in the libraries or just look around. (Well, almost. The doors are mostly unlocked all day and night, but if you're wandering the halls at 3 in the morning and you don't look like a student, the campus police are going to ask you some questions.)

One of the nice features about the campus is that the main academic buildings are connected to each other, either directly or via tunnels and skyways. This means that you don't ever have to step outside when you go from class to class, a real plus during the wintertime.

jamesbkel• 16 years ago

Very true. I occasionally walk over to the libraries when I need to hunker down and do some work/research. Fortunately, I look like a student...

danh• 16 years ago

Excellent article. Worth reading for this quote alone:

"I suspect his motivation was not so much to understand the world as it was to find new ideas to explain. The act of discovery was not complete for him until he had taught it to someone else."

metaguri• 16 years ago

one of my favorite articles of all time. the ending is... tearjerking, to be honest.

spot• 16 years ago

Strange he doesn't mention that the CM-2 added the floating point hardware (one stock FPU per 32 processors)...

Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine

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