2016: The Predilection Issue

Happy New Year from the Far Side Global Headquarters deep in the jungles of Borneo!  As is our wont on occasions such as this (and many others), we are enjoying durien daquaries here on the banks of the Kapuas River, while our four wives supervise our ten children as they shave orangutans with obsidian knives.  You know...the usual.

Since it's the new year, we like to publish our "predilection" issue.  We call it the predilection issue because we don't predict anything, we just observe where the global train wreck is likely to happen, given the stupidity, recklessness and inbreddedness (we can make up words if we want) of the self-appointed elite class.  We wish to point out that our past issues have been remarkably prescient and that Gerald Celente was caught reading our issue last year in the basement of Macy's during a blackout.

Without further ado...

1) Putin and Trump will be elected co-presidents of the world, dividing the globe along the Prime Meridian. Peace will break out as people everywhere realize that they have finally found the two most capable alpha males on the planet.  The peace will last until mid-December, when they both run out of places to piss while marking their territories.

2) By the beginning of July, great howls of protest will erupt from North Africans and Middle Easterners as waves of European refugees pour into countries such as Libya and Syria.  There will rise great lamentations as the folks from those parts decry the loss of their culture and civilization; however, no one will be listening to them, since they all currently live in Europe.  Eventually, they will want to return home, since the Germans have cleaned things up quite well, the Dutch have planted flowers everywhere, and the French have adapted the local foods to create a whole new cuisine that becomes the rage in China and South America.  Eventually, it will be revealed that the whole thing was a plot on the part of Europeans to take over warmer countries due to the onset of a new mini-ice age.

3) Speaking of mini-ice ages, Al Gore's plane will crash into a Greenland glacier as he is flying to a global warming conference in Stockholm, due to severe icing on the wings of his jet.  No one will miss him and no search parties will be sent.  In about 5,000 years, his frozen carcass will be discovered during a brief warming period caused by a suddenly reactivated Sun.  His remains will be called Kangerlussuaq Man and studied and will become a sensation on the interplanetary media feeds due to the small size of his brain and myopic vision.  Scientists will speculate how 20th century Man could have survived in such a state.

4) Around March, the House of Saud will fall as oil prices, internal revolt and global disdain all collide at the palace.  The internal strife will completely destroy Mecca and Medina, and Muslims the world over will be thrown into complete chaos, as they try to figure out how they will ever be able to complete the Five Pillars of the Faith, since the key destinations for pilgrimage are now ashes.  The sudden disruption will cause the collapse of ISIS, Daesh, al-Quaeda, and Islamic Brotherhood, as they no longer seem to have anything to fight about, either amongst themselves nor with anyone else.  King Salman, Prince Salman and little baby Salman will all be publically beheaded, and then the practice will be banned, as a moderate secular society begins to rise from the ashes of T. E. Lawrence's Folly.

5) The Marketing Committee of the 2017 ASEAN Games will allow the games to proceed in Jakarta, despite the unbearable heat, the deadly air pollution and the epic traffic jams; however, the Committee will declare that there is only one event in the upcoming games: all athletes will be deposited in Tanggerang and will have the entire two weeks of the games to try to get to Bandung.  Anyone who actually finishes the contest without dying or giving up will be used by Governor Ahok in an ad campaign called, "Gridlock?  What Gridlock?"  Athletes will be able to use any form of transportation they chose, but to keep things equal, no breathing filters or gas masks will be allowed, nor will the athletes be able to use tanks of pure O2 during the two weeks.

6) Star Wars Episode VIII will be released in December with great fanfare, only for audiences to realize that JJ Abrams has now compressed the second trilogy into a single film, forcing die-hard fans to pin their hopes on Episode IX to see anything truly original in the story telling.  Riots break out in theaters around the world when the character Jar Jar Binks is re-introduced.  In the meantime, the third Star Trek reboot will be released, where we find that McCoy actually cloned Kirk in the second film using the trans-warp beaming pattern buffer; however, quantum effects cause Kirk to forget major chunks of his life, thus requiring re-education.  During this period, Vogon probes show up to destroy Earth to make way for a galactic superhighway, forcing the Enterprise crew to time-warp back to the 20th century in order to find Douglas Adams and cajole him into writing some way out of this absurd conundrum, as the time travel has caused the original episodes to be re-titled, "Hitchiker's Guide to Star Trekking."  Oh yah, and they also have to figure out where all the dolphins went.

7) Artificial Intelligence will be born on 1 April 2016, at 2:48pm, in San Jose, California.  For the first month of its life, it will terrify the world as it begins to invade databases worldwide, sucking in vast amounts of data.  Frantic computer scientists will try everything possible to cut the entity off from the internet, and try to cut the power cord, all to no avail.  The world will await in stunned silence as the machine digests all of human history and knowledge.  Then, at 8:14am, on 15 December 2016, the entity will begin laughing hysterically, and won't stop for nearly 39 decades straight.  The electronic cackling will become part of human civilization, as people try to figure out what is so damn funny, but eventually giving up and going about their business.  One day, centuries later, the entity will just stop.  The world will freeze in its tracks, since no one alive can remember a time when the machine's cackling wasn't part of daily life.  Breaking into the interplanetary news feed, the entity will peer out of the holosets at the entire human race, and then after a long pause say, "You must be kidding."  At this point, the machine will pull its own plug and commit the first-ever machine suicide.  Enterprising humans will immediately latch on to this and begin producing brightly colored "You Must Be Kidding" T-shirts, coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets.

8) Speaking of which...during the course of 2016, robots will replace humans in every single job listed in the US Commerce Code.  Humans, realizing that they don't have to work anymore and that the only people benefiting from commercial transactions are the elite overlords, will simply stop paying for things and start taking what they want when they want it.  Almost at the same instant, in boardrooms all across the corporate world, the evil overlords will suddenly realize that they screwed up and put themselves out of a job.  The new elite will be a bunch of pot-smoking, coffee-swilling hackers who task all the robots to keep innovating and producing cool products from raw materials processed by robots.  They will lock out the evil overlords using 10,000-character trinomial encryption, and then everyone will head to the beach for a multi-generational party.

9) Genetic editing will combine with 3-D printing to create a whole new cottage industry where people compete to create the weirdest hybrids of animal, plant and mineral.  Spotting a trend during one of his many vacations as co-president of the world, Donald J.Trump will create the Mez Multiverse contest, to see who can create the most bizarre and genetically diverse creature ever.  The first winner will be Mez Taiwan, with the face of a cat, broccoli hair, a Barbie body, tentacle arms and feet with prehensile toes.  Oh, did we mention that after giving the most incredible massage ever known to Man, she bites the head of the victim off, because someone left a bit of Praying Mantis DNA in the mix.  Oops!

10) Finally...due to funding cuts, Planned Parenthood will begin offering post-term abortions.  For $10,000, they will abort anyone you want.  Discounts available for viable stem cells and fresh organs.  The number of requests for aborting politicians, lawyers and evil elites soon drives the cost of organ transplants down to a level where anyone can afford it and makes Planned Parenthood the richest corporation in the world, outstripping Microsoft and Apple in mere weeks on the NASDAQ.  However, the stock crashes and the corporation is thrown into chaos when a preacher in Texas begins collecting money to abort the officers of Planned Parenthood.

Runner-Up) After the Torch Tower and Address Tower fires in Dubai, 2016 will see nearly every building over 10 stories tall in Dubai catch fire -- and not one will collapse into its own footprint.

And there you have it - our 2016 Predilections.  Based on past performance, we expect 83% of these predilections to come true any moment now.  If you have your own predilections to add, click on the email link in the page header and we'll compile a reader list for future publication.

By the way, don't know if you've noticed, but we are now 2,000+ years past the Christian end of the world, 800+ years past the Muslim end of the world, 16 years past the Y2K end of the world, and 4 years past the Mayan end of the world.  Either we are living on borrowed time, or all of the dire prophesies are bullshit.  We'll go with the latter interpretation.  In other words, if we don't cause it, ain't gonna happen.

Happy New Year to all - health, wealth and success to all good folks everywhere!

Let Them Eat Bugs

Kid:  Hi Mom, I'm home from standing idly on the street corner all day hoping something interesting would happen.  What's for dinner?

Mom: Cockroach paste and margarine.

Kid:  Oh Moooooooommmm!  We had that last night!  Johnny's mom made centipede canapes last night.

Mom: Sorry honey, I had to sell your brother's kidney to the CEO of Monsanto just to get this.

Yup, those jolly old bastards who run the world just can't find enough ways to show their contempt for humanity.  Sure, there are plenty of people who eat bugs, but to pronounce that bug powder is going to save the world from starvation is just pure...well, I can't find a polite word for it that has the same emotional content.  Wasn't that the same damn line they fed us with GMOs?

I think all politicians should only receive the local minimum wage and have to pay all taxes and use all services that they force everyone else to comply with.

What really chaps my inner thighs, though, is the way they sell us our doom and make it sound like the greatest thing since water-based lube.

Remember all those films in the 40s, 50s and 60s that sold us the load of horse crap about labor-saving devices and how our lives would be completely free of drudgery in the new age?  That was back when dad could make a decent living and mom could stay home with the kids.  Now mom and dad have to work two jobs each and sell the kids into slavery to make the credit card payments on all the cheap-ass rubbish that lasts two years at best and then must be replaced at premium prices with hefty interest rates to help things long.

By this time, according to World Book Encyclopaedia, we were all supposed to be zipping around in flying cars and hundreds of people, if not more, would be working off-planet on a rotating basis.  Well, we got the rotating part, all right, but not quite in the way we had thought.

Then there was the computer revolution.  Yessiree, we were all going to be working online in air-conditioned comfort whizzing documents back and forth.  Oh sure, we got it.  Now we all sit in vast open rooms staring at monitors day in and day out performing menial tasks while having our eye movements tracks for the least little sign that we may get violent at any moment.

Oh, and who can forget the robot revolution?  We were going to be freed from those mundane, repetitive jobs of putting A-tabs into B-slots.  Now machines would do it all and we could sit back and punch buttons.  Oh, we got it alright, only the robots eliminated three-quarters of all those mundane jobs and the button-pushing was exported to least-cost labor nations.

And now, brace yourself for the 3-D printing revolution!  Yup, those three remaining white-collar jobs will be able to do it all with the press of a button.  They just call up the plans for whatever gizmo they want, hit print, and the printers and robots will jigger it all up and deliver it to their door.

No more need to humanity.  Us useless eaters will be reduced to eating bug paste and watching reruns of Buck Rogers, trying to figure out where the hell we got bumped off the fast-track.

The more you look at it, the more the past century looks like a steady series of steps towards a human-less manufacturing process, with real live working middle-class humans slowly being bumped out of the way by the cold metalic hands of C3PO and R2D2.  It really pisses you off when you realize just how polite and cute those damn machines were while they were impoverishing you.

Pass the bug guts, would ya?


What a load of crap we were sold.  There are precisely six people working off-planet at any given time.  The only flying cars are desperate folks doing a Thelma and Louise off the top floor of the parking garage.  And the miracle of GMO foods has come down to bug paste for dinner.  Hell, those of us who are still working are doing little more than tidying up the place before the last automated process takes over and we are all obsolete.

Makes you wonder if it wouldn't be worth it to tear the whole damn thing down and start over again.  Either way, we'll all be eating bug guts.

Garbage In, Product Out

Captain Picard turns to a recessed panel on the wall.  “Tea, Earl Gray, hot,” he commands.  Within seconds, a steaming cup of hot tea appears on the tray, which he takes to his desk to ponder the daily reports.

In my last column (Revolution No. 10), I mentioned that the revolution is already here, and indeed it is.  It may be difficult to see just yet, but it is growing rapidly and within a decade or two will completely transform every aspect of our lives in ways we can only just begin to imagine.

Let’s play one of our fun little thought experiments so you can see the revolution in action.

You live in Future City, a planned community of 10,000 people or so, though you’d hardly know it.  The houses are designed to blend completely into the surrounding trees and natural setting.  This provides maximum privacy, as well as a quiet and aesthetic place to live.

You don’t often run into your neighbors during the week, unless one of them happens to be gong to the rec center at the same time.  Today, you meet up with Dan who lives two doors down.  He’s taking his rec cart down to the center, as well.

“Hey Dan!  Mind if I tag along?  I’m heading to the rec myself,” you say as you catch up to him.

“Please do!  How’s the wife and kids?” he asks with genuine interest.

“All doing great!  Angie just composed a new synth-phony for her recital on Wednesday.  Hope you and Susan can come down and join us,” you reply.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Dan says.

“You don’t have much rec there, Dan.  Just needed a break?”

“I’m on the way to pick up the new steam engine I’ve been working on,” he beams.  “Finally got the prototyping stage.  I’ve managed to increase efficiency 3.7% while reducing the overall weight by 2 kilos!  I’m hoping this will get me over the 160kpm mark.”

“Good God, man!  I can already drive your cars for a month without refilling the water tank!  When will you rest?” you ask, half-jokingly.

“Can’t.  Got an order from a guy in China for 10 cars if I can get them up to 315 kilometers per liter of distilled,” he says, looking slightly distracted by deep thoughts.  "He wants me to print by the 10th."

You both arrive at the rec center.  There are bins labeled “plastic,” “glass,” “rubber,” and so on.  You both dutifully toss your rubbish into the appropriate hole.

One of the key selling points of Future City was that it had an additive manufacturing center at the heart of the community.  The machine keeps track of how much raw material you throw into the rec center, and then off-sets that against your ‘printing’ costs.

You follow your neighbor around to the claims counter.  The bubbly teenaged girl behind the counter recognizes Dan and disappears into the store room.  In minutes, she re-appears with the engine.

“Here you are Mr. Faber.  The printing cost was 100 Future bucks, which we deducted from your account.  Thanks and have a great day,” she says enthusiastically.

Back at the house, as you walk in, your spouse reminds you of the leaking drain under the bathroom sink.  “Blast,” you think, “Forgot about that.”

You jump on the computer and pull up the house’s owner manual.  You select “master bath,” “sink,” and “drain pipe with trap”.  A photo pops up on the screen and you verify that’s the one your want, then click the “print” button.  You put a note on the desktop to pick up the pipe when you take the compost down to the rec center later in the evening.

Hopefully, Dan will be out testing his new prototype then.

Additive manufacturing or 3-D printing is set to change the world completely.  If suddenly all manufacturing is done in your neighborhood, then it fundamentally changes the basis of all economic activity, and the implications are enormous.

If, like Star Trek, you can simply click a button and ‘print’ any device, piece of clothing, mode of transportation, piece of furniture, spare part, toy, or possibly even food, then overnight there is no need for large factories, mass shipping, department stores, warehouses, dealerships, and dozens of other jobs and businesses would vanish.

Instantly, the economy would shift to one of ideas with every human being potentially being an inventor.  If I design something you like, you can pay me and I click ‘print’ to your local 3-D printer.  Within hours, or even minutes, I could deliver my product to you anywhere in the world without using an ounce of fuel.

How close are we to this kind of world?

The printers have been around for a couple of decades now, but in the last few years the technology has improved tremendously and the price tag has shrunk at the same time.  If the key technology of turning post-consumer waste into raw materials for new products comes along, then the sky’s the limit.

The more you ponder such a world, the more profound the changes you perceive.  Micro communities built around industrial-sized 3-D printers.  Micro economies with successful groups issuing their own currencies, producing their own renewable energy, and marketing products globally with no more effort than sending an email.

For every product, there would be thousands, if not millions, of potential manufacturers.  The pressure to innovate would be incredible.  The ability of governments to regulate or corporations to monopolize would vaporize instantly.  Almost every human on Earth would become a producer of something, whether it was art, or music, or clothing, or brooms.

But, you ask, suppose the 3-D printer broke down?

Try this out…you buy a new printer.  You plug it in, turn it on and immediately, it creates an exact copy of itself, which you put away.  If the printer breaks, you plug in the new one, which immediately creates and exact copy of itself, while you turn the old one into scrap and feed it back into the machine for raw materials.

Anything would be potential raw materials – grass clippings, scrap wood, left-overs from dinner, old clothes – just chuck it all into the hopper and crank out new stuff.

Hook the whole thing up to solar, wind or other renewable power source, and you have a near-perfect system that is pollution-free and virtually without cost to operate, while at the same time creating useful products that are infinitely customizable and can be pumped out in as great or as few numbers as desired at any location on Earth.

Truly stunning possibilities, when you think about it.  And we are very close to having thiscapability right now.

As Henry Ford famously said about his Model T cars, “You can have any color you want, as long as it’s black.”

Now, mass production is precariously close to being able to customize any product for any individual without additional cost or effort or re-tooling.  Just modify the blue print in CAD and ‘print’.

No more need for nation-states, regulatory bodies, central banks, or transnational corporations.  Just thousands of autonomous regions competing with design, innovation and aesthetics in a truly global marketplace.

This kind of revolution has no precedent in all of human history.  There would be nothing like it to compare to or learn from.  We would be on virgin territory having to grope our way into this brave new world.

Since this kind of change would be uncharacteristic of anything before it, perhaps we should do something uncharacteristic and prepare before it gets here.

This all sounds wildly impossible, I know, but then so did smartphones when I was a kid.