It wasn’t only Shannon’s constant presence in the house, or the collection of electromechanical ephemera, that set him apart from other fathers. The Shannons were peculiar in the way that only a family headed by two mathematical minds might be. For instance, when it came time to decide who would handle the dishes after dinner, the Shannons turned to a game of chance: they wound up a robotic mouse, set it in the middle of their dining room table, and waited for the mouse to drop over one of the edges—and thus select that evening’s dishwasher.
