When a comedy hand pierces the balloon, the reaction of the competitors in an annual Rube Goldberg Machine contest at Purdue University in Indiana could only have been more fevered had they landed their device on the moon.
It is controversial to claim, as Standage does, that this represented the appearance of "a chess-playing machine that could defeat the world's best players"; Kasparov lost the match through some uncharacteristic blunders, and the two most recent man-machine contests have ended in draws.
The latest man-versus-machine contest is happening right now, this one on the game show "Jeopardy!" For three consecutive evenings starting on the 14th, the computerized contestant "Watson" strut its cognitive stuff on the air.
After the taping, the team had two other tournaments that day -- the Rube Goldberg machine competition and a bridge-building contest sponsored by Brookhaven National Laboratory.
At the end of the month, she will go up against the likes of Aphex Twin, Jamie XX and Florence + the Machine to contest one of Britain's foremost music prizes.
Rather than demonstrating their machine or entering contests for prizes, the Wrights focused on patenting their idea and perfecting its execution.
It has won an Ion Torrent machine in a contest and hopes to put it to that use.
The rugby team used a specially-designed scrum machine during the contest while the car had a special flat nose fitted.
(He learned that "something is not always better than nothing" from his mother, who once won a new washing machine in a contest, but refused the prize when the sponsors tried to fob off a used one on her).
Reports that the big party machines have the contests sewn-up leave little hope for much-vaunted independent candidates, and add to the general gloom.Of course, say optimists, only a handful of decent candidates need to win this time to show what the new roles can achieve.
Alex Shevtsov, founder and CEO of Youth Laboratories, recently asked, "You may like your Tesla, but would you like your Tesla to like you?" Despite the competition featuring the next generation of machine recognition, the beauty contest does not allow participants to use make-up, have beards or wear hats in their submitted selfies.
