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.’

THE YTIRALUGNIS

I'm kind of clever, kind of. I read about stuff that matters and I ponder it and comment about it, online usually as I find the interface of face to face a muddled and confusing place.

I'm currently worried about artificial intelligence and the impending Singularity. When it comes to artificial intelligence, the Singularity is the point when computers become more like humans only superior. It's quite concerning. Although, maybe, maybe, yeah maybe, I was thinking, we should be talking about things happening the other way around. We should be talking about the impending Ytiralugnis. That's what's really going to happen. The Ytiralugnis is the Singularity backwards, the point when humans become more like computers only inferior. When we all become the nodes of one great algorithmic consciousness. Led by the #s and validated by the 'likes'. 101001000011010001ing our nodey little heads off. All as one. Unified at last. A singular thing but in a perverse kind of reverse. All with opinions on opinions we are destined to have opinions on. Each of us will be a 'unique' series of takes on whatever is trending.

This is Lord Shiva as a search engine and us as anonymous voices emitting from the Cloud. We'll no longer be people but blogs and Twitter accounts and Facebook walls and apps and regular forum posters and viral uploads. We'll be multi-platform experiences. We'll all be part of one great family. Our surname will Dotcom. Our new family may be slightly dysfunctional, somewhat divided. The upper caste will be those with high hit counts. The lower caste the least hit. And newborns will be called noobs and the elderly will be sneeringly referred to as Commodore 64s. And when we die we'll be shipped off to a landfill in Ghana and stripped down for reusable parts and then incinerated on pyres by kids with emphysema, wearing homemade pollution filters, that never logged on in their lives.

The #Ytiralugnis – it's going to happen. It has happened. It's happening right now. Artificial Intelligence, it's making us kind of clever, kind of; reading about stuff that matters and pondering it and commenting about it online, finding the faceless interface a muddled and confusing place.