alt Hacker NewsI came here hoping to hear stories of the more intricate machines people have held.
I held a baby. Does that beat a phone?
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Puts a new spin on designed in California, built in China
Beats it for sure, humans are by far the most complex machines, a true marvel of the world. By comparisons, humans make phones look like simple toys.
Spectrum analyzer might not be baby-tier but it probably is more intricate than a phone. Not that I've held one.
>Where can you find another non-linear servo-mechanism weighing only 150 pounds and having great adaptability, that can be produced so cheaply by completely unskilled labor?
—Scott Crossfield, 1954 <https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/02/01/computer/>
Any animal beats an engineered machine. Heck, the bacteria in your hand are probably more intricate than a phone.
I put a lot of thought into that problem:
So a baby, a seed, any living thing (or even a chunk of something that was once living I suppose) is more complex, which I why I went with 'machine' to exclude those.
I also toyed with saying 'own' rather than 'held', but a modern electric car is basically a beefed up phone with a bunch of driving stuff too, so they wouldn't pass that test.
There are some edge cases: someone upthread held a classic inertial guidance system, and a modern GPU is arguably more intricate, though much more single-function, and good luck getting your hands on one of those anyway!