I tried making "real" clacks https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/2025/03/12/gnu-terry-prachet...
I need more time and motivation to make a full network though.
for a while I thought I might go to one of those uniquely nerdy colleges where they let you fuck around with dorm infrastructure.
i back-of-napkin'd a whole packet-over-laser relay system based conceptually on the clacks that'd give every room/station its own serial-interfacible (up|down) link. you could link buildings out of windows and stuff. horribly impractical and prohibitively expensive, but the kind of thing that could only happen in a university on-campus environment.
That is really quite a cool project and write-up.
This is my favourite part; very real.I think you're right; I suspect Terry would have been tickled by the header, but if there were any physical world implementations I think he would have been overjoyed. One of my favourite Terry stories is of him making his sword, which feels similar.