

Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine - alfredp
http://www.longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/

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philh
>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
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.

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ced
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
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
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...

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TY
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
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
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.

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

~~~
mark_h
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>

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

~~~
jbellis
I couldn't find the comments section. Link?

~~~
anonjon
just scroll down from the dailywtf article

([http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Thinking-
Machines.aspx?pg=3#...](http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Thinking-
Machines.aspx?pg=3#194568) for Ken Jones).

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danh
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."

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

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

