For some reason, today I've been thinking about a story one of my teachers told me once. Some young relative of his had wanted to participate in an Invention Fair, but couldn't think of a real invention, so he just put a name card next to an empty space, with "Invisible Nothing Machine" written on the card.
I can just imagine his conversation with the judges:
"What's that?"
"It's an Invisible Nothing Machine."
"What's it made out of?"
"It's made out of nothing."
"What does it do?"
"It does nothing."
"Why would we need a machine that's made out of nothing and does nothing?"
"It saves a lot of time and money. Building it requires no resources and no work, and once it's built, it saves humans from having to do nothing all by themselves."
"Hmm. He's got a point. If we had a machine to do nothing for us, we could spend more time doing something. It would greatly boost our overall productivity as a species."
"I say we give him a prize."
According to my teacher, the kid actually did get a prize. An Honorable Mention or something. I suppose that says something about the world, but I'm not sure what.
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