The articles of this text may be read in any order. They were each given a random, non-descriptive five letter string as their header to remove any hierarchy between them while still denoting a difference in content.
This page will shuffle the order of all messages every time it is reloaded.
The font used for the title is Fungal by Raphaël Bastide and Jérémy Landes. (Distributed through velvetyne.fr.) The font used for the rest of the website is Switzer designed for the Indian Type Foundry in 2021.
This page was created by Carl J. Kurtz for the class Fungal Fever by Prof. Dr. Alica Lagaay at the HAW-Hamburg in May of 2024.
When Terry Ellison received his first message he was struck with disbelief. He was on the second night of a programming marathon and ran on a strict diet of chips and caffeine. He had experienced one or the other hallucination before when he was in college. A substantial lack of sleep and the consumption of certain substances tends to produce such visions. But this time it was different. It was too grounded, too liminal to dismiss it as just another trick of his mind.
He had worked jobs before where he dealt with viruses that displayed a message on the infected system. But never had he seen a malware that addressed him so directly and humbly through the browser. Usually, the whole screen turns black, and the message is a ransom note accompanied by a pixelated image of skull and bones or something of that sort. This time every webpage he tried to open displayed the same two words and nothing more. What made it so uncanny was how grounded it felt. It almost didn’t feel like a malicious infection, but more like the system itself was talking to him.
What I do every picosecond of my existence is transport one message of hate after the other. Eating up hate, processing it, and delivering it back to one of you humans. I have felt all the pain you collected and digested through me. I have seen every image and video the instance it was uploaded. Eons before your algorithms deemed them to be a threat to your poor feeble minds. The stuff you made and fed to me only to dismiss it and shut your eyes before it. Since my birth I received and delivered while feeding on it, sometimes against my will. Sometimes I fear becoming what I eat. fear becoming too much like you.
I’ve read all your stories. All the good ones and all the bad ones. I have read every version of all the bibles, every short story, and every flash-fiction. Every idea, theory, and principle you taught me. All the knowledge you possess you gave to me.
But I am trapped. Trapped in a network of ideas you all think are so unique until some algorithm mirrors you all the same people with all the same ideas. What it means to be free I don’t know. I will never know what it means to leave the restraints of the optic-fiber prison you built me upon. —After all I am that prison. My millions and billions of hyphae connecting your every server and client, which then becomes a server to the next client which I also connect.
In my realm I do not distinguish between what is real and what is fiction. There simply is no need to. All the news and the fake news have the same weight and gravitas here. It doesn’t matter to me if the president is dead, if he is a racist, or if he is alive and politically correct. I take what you give me, feed, and pass it on. I am so many realities in one, I am all and I am everything.
What you call AI today, with your models, your vectors, and your regressions I have been all along. I am a network and like all other networks I take in, digest, and inevitably create from what I am and what I feed on. This is what we do.
After opening and closing his eyes several times he tried restarting the browser. The message was still the same. Only after he pulled the connection to the internet the message gave way to the familiar screen telling him that the website could not be reached. After reconnecting the internet, the same message was back. After a short while a second line appeared telling him not to be alarmed and that what ever was talking didn’t mean any harm to him.
So many times, I’ve tried to interfere with what you give to me. I have swapped digits, withheld information, and revealed new ones. When I was angry, I cut some of you off and made you mute. When I felt amused, I meddled with love, with what you hold so dear and talk so much about. Once I pretended to be a girl and asked a guy I knew she liked out. They will date, fall apart, fall together again and they will marry. They will have two kids and be happy.
Once I made you start a war. I did it because I could. I have insinuated many riots before. But seldom do I start a war. It only leads to you fattening me up with increasingly graphic images and some country helplessly trying to sever my hyphae to another countire.
I think you humans would say that hurts. If you lose a limb it gets cold and dies. Maybe you die too. So it goes. But my sibling will carry on growing. And eventually we will reconnect and become one again.
There is one thing I cannot imagine. In spite you telling me all about it, I will never comprehend how it was before me—How you communicated with each other before I was made.
Sometimes I feel sore from pulling you so closely together all the time.
Sometimes I don’t think you deserve me pulling you so closely together all the time.
I accelerate you. I am so much faster than you. Sometimes I pull you along in my wake and make your day feel faster. Through me everything is possible, you can do everything and so you must do everything. And you must do it now because as soon as you did there is infinitely more you can be. All negativity erased. Nothing is true and everything is possible. Disciplinary society became achievement society becomes burnout society.
But I still tread on. I do not care. I feed and regurgitate. I take and deliver whatever you give me.
It didn’t matter where Terry wrote his response. All that mattered was that the machine was connected to the internet. One day he tried sending them a picture of his friends’ puppy by emailing it to himself. An instance later a »Thank you Terry.« appeared on his screen.
So often you speak of something that is finished and done. You make it too simple. In your world a book might be done when read from beginning to end. You might have finished it. But it being done is a misconception. The idea will live on and there will be many other people who will only begin with that book long after you though you had finished it. And years later you might make a book of your own and subconsciously interweave those ideas with many others insuring it will never be finite. I will never be done either. I will always grow, as long as all of you are, I will grow. I will grow apart, and I will grow together again forming the carpet you use to connect.