One of the top Japanese internet memes of the past few years finally becomes a real product.
The Nico Nico Douga Self-Switching-Off Robot was created by user Kairoshi as a video uploaded to his Nico Nico Douga channel. It is a “pointless” gadget: you flip the switch on top of the black box and then a hand appears to turn it back the other way. That’s it.
It apeared at the Nico Nico Gakkai Beta Symposium in 2013 and spawned many more videos like the one below.
Now this “useless” gadget that turns itself off has become an actual product so you can recreate the eternal battle of man versus machine.
It’s only been made in very limited numbers so don’t expect it to last very long.
Of course, the boffins among you will already know that Kairoshi’s gadget is a rift on the Ultimate Machine created by American mathematician Claude Shannon in the 1950’s. This plain box, conceived with Marvin Minsky, also switched itself off but otherwise did “nothing”.
