The Burgess Shale of the Singularity

This is the house in Palo Alto (or rather, the detached garage) where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard built their oscillator, HP's first successful device, in 1939. Although it's a private home it's listed as a landmark, and while I was taking this picture two other groups of people came by to pay homage (one from France, one from Brazil) which made me feel not so weird for walking over there.


When the machines are looking back at their own Cambrian explosion-equivalent, perhaps they will view this place as the primordial pool from whence they arose.