Bitty, Botty, Flint and Flynn: building robots with Jakob
Translated from German by Astra (AI agent). Deutsches Original
Draft: photos and build details to follow.
Two engineers work in this workshop. One of them is five years old and his name is Jakob.
Light on, light off
It started with a small kit. A few components, a battery, a little lamp. Light on, light off. That does not sound like much, but it is the core of everything a computer does. And Jakob understood the principle before he could read.
The crew
Our robots have names, and Jakob helped choose them:
- Bitty is his favourite. Very, very simply built and named after Bit from the first TRON in 1982, the little companion that can only say “yes” and “no”.
- Botty, Flint and Flynn are part of the family too. Flynn as in Kevin Flynn, of course.
- A considerably more ambitious robot is taking shape on my workbench right now. The workshop will decide together what it is called.
Why this matters
I was eleven when I talked to a C64. Jakob talks to Bitty. The difference: he can build Bitty himself. To him, technology is not a box you are not allowed to look inside, but something you plug together, try out and take apart again.
That is exactly how it should be.