Brilliant design or malevolent misanthropism? Probably both. Here's the story of the gadget's inspiration, in the words of its creator:
This is an old invention of mine. I had trouble waking up for work, and
traditional alarm clocks didn't seem to help. I learned to hit the
snooze or off buttons in my sleep. The problem was that alarms are too
easy to turn off, and so I set forth to create an alarm clock that
challenges me to prove that I am awake.How should it challenge me? Well, I'm from a math background, so the natural choice is with arithmatic. A problem like 23*17 + 6 will keep me thinking for at least 20 seconds; if the alarm clock makes me solve five in a row, then it can be sure I'm awake. There's no way I can learn to do this in my sleep.
Now, I'm a fairly industrious fellow, but even I am in awe of the diligence on display here. Mr. Johnson cobbled together his invention with cheap LEDs and processors, and even created a few YouTube videos to showcase his idea. What's more, he has made the source code public, and published schematics and board outlines online. Will an enterprising manufacturer take him up on the offer? Time will tell. He's probably got a market out there -- the bleary-eyed undergrads at MIT, if no one else. If I've learned one thing about math majors, it's that you can't tell what they're liable to buy. Or invent.
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