Why We Build Goldberg Machines
And love solving other ‘pointless’ problems
Most of us have come across the name Rube Goldberg. His most memorable work was a series of cartoons that depicted machines performing simple tasks in ingenious, but convoluted ways.
Goldberg’s cartoons were almost always satirical and his iconic illustrations of roundabout machines were meant to show us the ridiculousness of a fully automated world. In fact, his name has become synonymous with the conceptual machines he drew.
Now, any system that takes an unusually (and unnecessarily) complicated route to finish a task is dubbed a ‘Goldberg machine’.
And we’re not just amused by Goldberg machines, we’re also quite fascinated with building them.
These elaborate systems are not something you can knock together in a hurry and people sometimes spend hundreds of fruitless hours before they succeed. It’s not just a hobby either. Engineering course departments have projects and contests for building Goldberg machines.
But given the pointless nature of the whole thing, why do we do this? Is it even worth the effort?
The answer lies in the human predilection for creativity and problem-solving.
Problems are important to the human psyche.
When there are no problems to tackle, no matter how trivial, we get bored. And the problem that the Goldberg machine proposes is just unstructured enough to give our imagination free rein while still giving us a solid, achievable goal.
I compare the process of building Goldberg machines to writing.
The bric-a-brac used to build the system are like the unstructured and seemingly unconnected pieces in a first draft. But eventually as we revise the draft, order arises from the chaos.
Engineers build Goldberg machines to think. Like a first draft, it helps them build a mindset that resorts to creativity to find solutions. This ultimately helps in finding unnecessary complexities in other problems and using the tools at hand to achieve the expected result.
And the reward for the creator is not just a clever (albeit, inefficient) machine. The real prize is the way his or her brain has been stimulated to make new pathways and connections and the rush of physically manufactured happiness that follows—all vital to the evolution and survival of our species.
Nothing we enjoy doing is pointless. Every problem that challenges us is worth solving because creativity and inspiration lurk in the most unlikely places, and it’s upto us to find them.
Note: Shared this with a colleague who has years of engineering and musical experience, and he added a deeper dimension to it that I missed:
RGMs are (atleast to me) more about precision and control, than problem solving. The longer a sequence of events (each connected by cause and effect), the more precision it takes to orchestrate the entire chain. So the exercise is about how precisely, as well as (of course) how interestingly, you can orchestrate it. This perhaps holds for various forms of classical music too.
On a related note, a Goldberg machine is usually set up in a controlled environment to remove external disturbances that might break the system. The more intricate your setup, the more precise you’re going to have to be and the more effort it takes to stay in control — a paradigm that applies to most real-world problems as well.
If you liked this post, go forth and build your own Goldberg machines or solve a problem today. Thank you for reading!
