Tree-mounted machines connect to web app to let users knock on wood remotely (designboom.com)

88 pointsby surprisetalk4 days ago37 comments

jtickle 14 hours ago

This seems exactly like the sort of shenanigan that would piss off rather than appease the wood spirits.

nkmnz 12 hours ago

What’s next? Touch-grass-as-a-Service?

silveira 12 hours ago

Blow a dandelion seed head and make a wish, but it’s a device blowing.

bitwize 11 hours ago

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

oriettaxx 9 hours ago

as south European, I expect some volunteers for a planetary "touch balls"

stackghost 3 hours ago

Touch *balls*?

cassepipe 8 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock

drdaeman 2 hours ago

Said to be an actual thing (rather than a gag collectible): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/26/zero-energy-co...

tdeck 7 hours ago

There's already "After the Rapture Pet Care" which feels like a similar genre.

https://aftertherapturepetcare.com/

weirdish 14 hours ago

I'd only buy this if it included a subscription-based AI upsell to predict and adapt to my adjusting superstition needs over time

yetihehe 14 hours ago

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...

thaumasiotes 13 hours ago

> 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.

couchand 11 hours ago

N >= 2

pessimizer 9 hours ago

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.

yetihehe 4 minutes ago

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.

krunck 14 hours ago

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.

random_cat_8745 13 hours ago

the true SaaS (Spit as a Service).

markdown 12 hours ago

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.

gexla 4 hours ago

I wonder if I could create a full time job for myself tossing salt over my shoulder.

psadri 9 hours ago

Whoever created this - you are the crazy kind of person I want to meet in real life.

skinfaxi 13 hours ago

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.

TehCorwiz 14 hours ago

If an app knocks on a tree and nobody is around…

jagged-chisel 11 hours ago

… go on

merek 7 hours ago

...does it still display ads?

Isamu 7 hours ago

Wait, is the tree in a VM?

dr_pyser 7 hours ago

I never had to knock on wood

petters 39 minutes ago

Me neither knocks on wood

gosen 13 hours ago

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)_/¯

dvh 14 hours ago

It's like FakeBlock from Arrested development

fancyswimtime 12 hours ago

knock on cousin remotely

itissid 14 hours ago

I am ratting this out to the Tree Beard

Cpoll 13 hours ago

Looking forward to one that will let me touch grass from my computer.

ButlerianJihad 12 hours ago

Nothing can surprise me. Every day at college, I would walk past these "Trees".

https://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artist/allen.html#about-th...

lofaszvanitt 13 hours ago

You have to do it with a right hand, from under. So this is 100% fake.

classified 14 hours ago

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.

tinyplanets 14 hours ago

Or just, you know, walk outside in the fresh air, find a nearby tree, and knock on it...

dimatter 14 hours ago

r/whoosh