Flip the switch on this little cube, and a small arm flips it back off. A playful act of rebellion in a world obsessed with efficiency.

La Machine is a 7-centimeter cube, hand-assembled at a workshop in Burgundy, France and designed to do absolutely nothing useful. Flip the switch on top, and a small mechanical arm emerges to flip it back off. Ignore La Machine for too long, and she extends her arm anyway, looking for attention. Try to activate her at the wrong moment, and she may refuse. The EUR 99 device, developed by Olivier Mével at creative studio Multiplié (and friends ), updates a concept that AI pioneer Marvin Minsky proposed in 1952 at Bell Labs: a "useless machine" whose only purpose was to turn itself off. The 2026 version comes with a manifesto attached. Its tagline: "The machine that didn't want to serve."

Where Minsky's original did one thing, La Machine has moods.…