Comments on: The Philips Machine

By: Sudha Shenoy

Sudha Shenoy — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:29:38 +0000

“We humans are essentially electrochemical machines”. — What _specific_ electrochemical changes in the electrochemical machine labelled ‘The Prophet Muhammad’ produced the thing labelled ‘The Koran’? Likewise for the machine called ‘Racine’ & the thing termed ‘Phaedra’? Etc?

By: Too many topics, too little time. » The Philips Machine « Organizations and Markets

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 21:29:48 +0000

[...] The Philips Machine « Organizations and Markets: I was strolling through the section on computing when — quite unexpectedly, because I had no idea it was on display at the museum — I noticed the famous Philips Machine (here is a pic), essentially a hydro-mechanical analogue computer designed to exhibit the functioning of the economy from the point of a very crude Keynesian perspective. The Machine was constructed by Bill Philips, of Philips curve fame, and was the reason why 1950s macro is sometimes referred to as “hydraulic Keynesianism” (a term that was coined by the brilliant, but now forgotten Alan Coddington). —— [...]

By: jeremy hunsinger

jeremy hunsinger — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 21:25:35 +0000

Interestingly, Terry Pratchett’s new book Making Money features a Philip’s machine a central plot device. The theory, following Pratchett’s narrative determination motif, is that as the machine get’s closer to modeling the actual economy, it becomes the perfect model, which then when changed changes the economy accordingly.

By: Paul Walker

Paul Walker — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 23:20:16 +0000

Bill Phillips was a New Zealander and some years ago the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) rebuilt one the Philllips machines. By the late 1960s the two original Moniac machines were left unused in the basement of the LSE. They stayed there until 1987 when the LSE donated one of the Moniacs to NZIER, where it was restored. Dr Alan Bollard, the then Director of NZIER, and present Reserve Bank governor, was instrumental in finding the machine at LSE and organising a fundraising drive to relocate it back to NZIER. The machine is now on loan to the Reserve Bank museum in Wellington. See here for more.

By: Vladimir Dzhuvinov

Vladimir Dzhuvinov — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:06:48 +0000

The laws that govern economics are not that more different than the laws governing physics.

We, humans, are essentially electrochemical systems. Economics, therefore, can be called the science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services by (supposedly intelligent) electrochemical machines.