Tree-mounted machines connect to web app to let users knock on wood remotely
designboom.com88 points by surprisetalk 4 days ago
88 points by surprisetalk 4 days ago
This seems exactly like the sort of shenanigan that would piss off rather than appease the wood spirits.
What’s next? Touch-grass-as-a-Service?
Said to be an actual thing (rather than a gag collectible): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/26/zero-energy-co...
A service to automatically throw St. Joseph's Day bread into someone's backyard
The Rabbit AI of this space: a wearable over-the-shoulder salt thrower that connects to a cloud API
I'd only buy this if it included a subscription-based AI upsell to predict and adapt to my adjusting superstition needs over time
Knocking on wood was about knocking on unpainted wood, so that you have actual direct physical contact with wood. Remote knocking seems to go in the other direction...
> Knocking on wood was about knocking on unpainted wood, so that you have actual direct physical contact with wood.
How do you know this? For example, there is a wikipedia page section entitled "Origin of use in the English language"...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocking_on_wood#Origin_of_use...
but the contents of that section make it extremely clear that no relevant facts are known to wikipedia.
I know it from Polish usage. In Polish it's "odpukać w niemalowane [drewno]"/"knocking on unpainted [wood]", wood is typically not spoken, the important part is that the wood is unpainted/raw. Superstitious people would especially leave the underside of table unpainted or leave some unpainted wood nearby in living room just for this occasion.
The contents of the article make it clear that "touch wood" is basically synonymous with "knock on wood," making the knocking less important than the touching.
But is is important to mention that a ctrl-f on that page for "unpainted" is proof that you didn't spend much time looking.
There are societies where rather than knocking on wood one turns one's head and spits. For example: "Grandad is looking well after his fall, let's hope that doesn't happen again. Ptew!"
Looking for this in app form.
the true SaaS (Spit as a Service).
I'm imagining a thousand people in a spitshop in (Mechanical) Turkey in a sitting at desks with a spittoon, waiting for a signal to spit.
I wonder if I could create a full time job for myself tossing salt over my shoulder.
Whoever created this - you are the crazy kind of person I want to meet in real life.
Found this other experiment, part of the same series "Machines Responding to Superstitions".
https://www.dezeen.com/2023/10/31/kinky-kashayam-portable-bl...
Though it seems less like machine response than humans integrating technology into superstitious belief.
If an app knocks on a tree and nobody is around…
I never had to knock on wood
I can't explain why but it's amazing! Maybe because in my culture "knocking on the wood 3 times" helps to avoid the bad luck and I lived with that for 20 years, or maybe it's just fun to imagine that you're knocking on the wood remotely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's like FakeBlock from Arrested development
I am ratting this out to the Tree Beard
Looking forward to one that will let me touch grass from my computer.
Nothing can surprise me. Every day at college, I would walk past these "Trees".
https://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artist/allen.html#about-th...
You have to do it with a right hand, from under. So this is 100% fake.
The knockers are missing solar panels to continuously charge their batteries. So there will be sustained costs to keep them running. And how water-proof are they? Apart from that, it's going to sell like hot cakes.
Or just, you know, walk outside in the fresh air, find a nearby tree, and knock on it...
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