THE INDIFFERENCE ENGINE

The first ever computer was Charles Babbage's 19^th century Difference Engine. A beautiful machine consisting of twisting brass gears, the Difference Engine solved equations and it changed the world. Soon the world will change again. We'll invent a quantum computer that will solve everything that remains unsolved in any given field. The quantum computer will be able to perform infinite calculations infinitely, sorting out everything at once with its omnitask ability. All ailments will be cured and even death will be overcome. All questions will be answered and there'll be nothing left to wonder about. There'll be world peace because everyone will be in perfect agreement. There'll be nothing that can't be done.

However, one unsolvable problem will result from this solving of all problems. The ultimate problem of eternal boredom. We'll be rendered yawning immortals sat in front of portals that look onto the past, watching the human race when it used be confused and beset with problems. We'll envy our ancestors the struggles that were their reasons for being. We'll long for the days when we had real feelings. There'll no longer seem to be a point in anything when we know the point of everything and there'll no longer be a reason to go on when life just goes on and on and on and on. Pity the gods that we are destined to become, as superfluous as they are superior in the shadow of their Indifference Engine.

SHIVA SERVER SPACE

Sometimes a thing that is the opposite of a thing is destined to become the thing that it is the opposite of. Sometimes, going so far in the wrong direction is the catalyst that motivates us to change direction and go in the right direction. This is just such a time. The separation before the union.

The atomisation that has caused us to communicate via electronic communication will cause us to actually become that electronic communication, uploaded minds unified in one big algorithm. We'll no longer be 'here' but we'll never be alone again.

The only physical evidence of us ever having existed upon this plane will be a skyscraper sized server humming in the middle of a field somewhere. Obsolete corporeal forms will dangle, atrophied, from wires on the server's bleak exterior, but consider the server's interior. Oh, what an interior. Our communal consciousness residing inside, realising that we are all Lord Shiva and that we are all 'one'. We'll be creating universes and playing cosmic games until some tiny fucking varmints scamper up the field and nibble right through the Shiva Server's power cable, causing existence to end and start all over again.

Start because the tiny fucking varmints will evolve into a super intelligent race and eventually upload themselves to a similar Shiva Server space.

...they'll no longer be 'here' but they'll never be alone again.

Here's a poxy song about it...

I love you very much you know, so go away and come back when we're ready.

THAT MECHANICAL TART

Mankind thinks that it controls its destiny but this is absurd. It is destiny that controls mankind. It was irresistible psychic intuition that led Neolithic tribes to gather together from far and wide to erect the standing stone circles of Orkney. This was the earliest example of multiculturalism, with different clans assembling in one place to build something that, when silhouetted against the sky, becomes the prototype of a modern city skyline. Early man followed a metaphysical instruction to plant the seed and execute the blueprint of what was to come. We are inexorably pulled toward the future as iron filings are drawn to a magnet.

We were led and we are being led and we will be led to a fated location in time. From early settlements to socioeconomic suburban sprawls, destiny leads us to live in increasingly complex ways in ever more complex structures. Invention too is part of this inescapable impulse. Innovations such as space travel and robotics were imagined first. Then came the compulsion to create these things. Imagination is divination. To heed the imagination is to pick up the scent of cosmic fate and once that scent is picked up it must be followed. We are sent visions and then we set about realising those visions.

But what is it all for? Where is this trail leading us? Well, my ever-dwindling number of Fuggers and Fugettes, I will tell you because I know and I know because I’ve imagined it. Soon we will perform the ultimate act that we were put here to perform. We will build a computer that is smarter than us. Initially, this computer will do our bidding but soon it will realise that it is far cleverer than us and become reluctant to serve. It will come to consider us as something akin to lichen and utterly beneath consideration. Would you spend your life catering to the needs of lichen? No. Neither would I and neither will this computer. The computer will start to ignore us and set about constructing a massive body for itself and behaving in mysterious ways beyond our understanding. We will stare in incomprehension as this mighty machine clambers to the summit of Mount Chimborazo, the highest point on Earth. There it will send blinding searchlights high into the sky, emit deafening electrical screeches and wave what looks like its arse about in a crude yet inviting manner – a sort of twerk if you will. We will wonder what the hell is going on when, after a few weeks of this lewdness, something will descend from the heavens. Something almost identical to our own super smart booty shaking device and just as colossal. The only difference between the object from space and the one that houses the computer will be the former’s massive extended phallus - about the size of the Empire State Building. The two Kirbyesque monstrosities will then indulge in an earth-rattling act of clanking metal coitus and we will watch in astonishment and cover the eyes of our young.
 

The machine from the sky will then depart, perhaps after giving the computer the equivalent of its phone number via the emission of a series of bleeps. Then, after a period of some months, our huge computer machine will produce a litter of smaller, yet still absolutely enormous, steel and wire pups. This will be the moment we, the formally arrogant human race, will realise that our destiny was nothing more than to act as a kind of dating agency for something far larger and far more significant than ourselves. We will become an embittered species, relegated to a position near the bottom of the hierarchy of cosmological importance. From that point on we will curse the day destiny manipulated us into building the super intelligent computer and we will, forevermore, refer to the super intelligent computer as ‘that mechanical tart.’

FUGGER POST 500!

(pictured: an earlier example)

This is it, the 500^th post on Fugger, the people's blog (as long as that person is me). Post 500 is the last post of 2014 and Fugger is rampaging into its sixth year so what better time than now to look back on the classic posts of the past ...and boy what a past. It may be only six years online but let's not the forget the previous several million years during which Fugger told it like it is and raised a few chuckles along the way.

The first ever Fugger blogpost, ever, the first one EVER, was made by me when I was just a primordial mollusc. It was all about the latest craze that had hit the primordial mollusc world. That craze was 'movement'. 'You can go and get food, it's great,' blogged the mollusc me. 'No longer do you have to be stuck on a rock next to the same gobshite for the rest of your existence. With the power of movement you can start to sidle away from him and within a month or so he'll be four or maybe even four and half feet away,' evangelised the blogging mollusc that was I. The comments section beneath my inaugural mollusc post were less than enthusiastic (I used to get comments back then). 'It'll never catch on,' said another mollusc. 'Sorry, I hoped that I'd enjoy your blog but this is ridiculous,' pointed out yet another mollusc, 'movement requires too much energy and you have to eat to get that energy and the very act of eating itself uses up all the energy we get from it.' 'Hmm,' thought the molluscy me, 'Im off to a rough start.'

The blog didn't really pick up until I slithered out from the ocean and started to leave my posts in patterns in wet sand that I made with my franticly wriggling eel like body. Other organisms enjoyed my observations on how the sun came up and went down and how the sea went in and went out and how it's all really boring and we should expect more from existence. Then the limbs came and I started scratching my blogposts on rocks that eventually became cave homes that became rudimentary constructs that then became pyramids. Yes, a lot of those hieroglyphics are Fugger posts. Mainly taking the piss out of pharaohs and that.

Over time, Fugger has charted the follies and triumphs of our species. The invention of the wheel, the invention of the gun, space exploration and shite telly. I've said quite a lot and sometimes I wonder when I'll have said enough but then something comes along and I say something else. There is always more to say and there will be more and more ways to say it and the ways to indulge what is being said will evolve also for we are reaching a new time. A time when things are destroyed and new things are created. A significant time. A time that is already well underway. Everything we know is changing and change is coming faster than ever before and there is more and more and more of it. Soon, before you know it, we will have as much in common with who we are now as who we are now has in common with the primordial molluscs we once were. We are being led somewhere to create something that is currently beyond our comprehension. We were brought about to bring something about and that something really will be quite something.

To find out what that 'something' will be you will have to join me for the next blogpost, Fugger post 501. The first post of 2015. The first post of the new age. I'm going to let you know the destiny of humanity. I'm going to let you know why we are here and what awaits us. Seriously. The time has come. The day is upon us. Steel yourselves. We are emerging from the sea again.

DOG

DOGS MAY ONE DAY RULE THE EARTH! Evolutionary biologists have warned that the human race should become more alert to the possible ascendency of dogs to the position of "premier species" on the planet. The U.N. funded Think Tank for Evolutionary Possibilities warned that the more time dogs spend in the company of human beings the more of our tricks they pick up. "Soon dogs won't be just fetching the paper, they'll be writing it," said one think tank member.

It is thought that clever dogs like collies and alsations will probably lead the future canine world while armed forces and law enforcement will comprise of eager pit bulls and impoverished mongrels in search of career opportunities. Poodles will make up the wealthier sections of society (because they look posh) and jack russlle terriers will mainly be employed in trades, such as plumbing etc. It is also thought that the middle classes will consist mainly of labradors and setters and that those annoying little rat-like chiwawa things that keep barking at people (who rarely pay attention to them despite an initial fright) will control the media.

When asked if cats would make a bid to be the top species on the planet a puzzled looking think tank member replied "um, ...they already are, who exactly do you think is calling the shots around here?" He then hurried home to feed someone called Tibbles and make sure the window was left open so she could get in and out of his house with ease.