Orchestrions
- ID
- 7054
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 22 Jul 2026, 10:48 PM
- Fetched
- 23 Jul 2026, 8:34 AM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/22/all-the-orchestrions/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 1.0
- Created
- 23 Jul 2026, 8:34 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
Simon Willison shares a tip for visiting Musée Mécanique in San Francisco, noting it costs about $15 to activate all the Orchestrions (self-playing mechanical instruments), and that few visitors do so, meaning you can effectively control the museum's soundscape.
Why it matters
This is a personal travel anecdote with no direct relevance to AI/ML, developer tools, startups, or Malaysian tech. It is essentially off-topic for the weekly segment and would only be useful as a brief icebreaker or tangent.
Discussion angle
Skip or use as a 30-second icebreaker about quirky analog engineering — self-playing mechanical instruments as a metaphor for autonomous agents doing tasks without human intervention.