'In the USA they had Trump and in Britain we had Brexit, as if being smart was suddenly less important. Human stupidity was out and about, as if at a specific moment we lost sight of certain objectives.' 2018, 51 universalturingmachine.co.uk

Monthly newsletter out today. Tips, reminders and all things UTM. If anyone wants a copy and isn't on the list: email [email protected]

'Large language models couldn’t come close to knowing how life had been for me. They configured rounded characters who developed in arcs whereas time travel disintegrated the self, always had done.' 2023, 56

'I was from the last generation of true believers in the written word, both as a medium for self-expression and an act of resistance. The page was a place where time stopped. What was left? What was written.' 2023, 56 universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'The Universal Turing Machine should pass the Turing Test, as a book that was convincingly human. Difficult, imperfect, awkward. Write what you know.' 2023, 56

'In The Universal Turing Machine questions would be raised and questions answered, not always in that order. If there was a risk of confusion, there was the reward of authenticity: a narrative that progressed one thing after another wasn’t true to life. Not enough things. Not mixed up enough.' 2023

Really enjoyed this piece about @richbeard.bsky.social's new memoir project. Quite tempted to give The Universal Turing Machine (@universalturing.bsky.social) a go. Give them both a follow.

'Over her lifetime the Duchess had got so much of what she wanted that she was largely immune to pleasure. She felt at best a mild satisfaction when something was almost as good as it used to be.' 1991, 24

Welcome! A home for anyone who wants to write a memoir and isn’t sure where to start. Full details of how to get involved: www.universalturingmachine.org

In the next phases, the Universal Turing Machine will grow like this. More details on Monday.

Story of a life. How would you organise yours? Up to a thousand words for each square.

'The human need to understand things as a story instead of a series of discrete events can lead to many flawed conclusions.' Garry Kasparov (2025, 62).

The Bookseller jumps the gun - not the 8th but the 15th, next Monday, for the next phase of the UTM. Not surprised they couldn't wait.

'Writing was an information storage technology that allowed me to accumulate thoughts outside the brain, and I loved to do that, to the best of my ability.' 1996, 29

'Fiction required forward planning. Along with motivated characters in detailed locations engaged in plausible actions, a novel was like a game of chess – readers were the partner across the board manipulated from one disposition to another.' 2002, 35

'The plot was constructed from nothing and the nothing showed through. My ordered cause and effect was no match for the muddle of non-fiction life, and the showmanship of story-telling failed to convince me that my heart was still aglow.' 2019, 52 universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'A game for the library and the sanitorium, for the asylum, the in-time play of chess was absurdly inferior to football, to shins and slide-tackles and the sweet physical possession of the ball at my feet. I was too much body, not enough brain.' 1980, 13 universalturingmachine.co.uk

UTM in The Tablet.

'I intended to live and write for free in an eighteenth-century French chateau. In return, the bachelor owner of the chateau expected what he could also get, he told me, from any boy in the village, not for free, admittedly, but in most cases for about five hundred francs.’ 1990, 23

'Neither branch of the family contained writers, though Mum did love to edit the furniture.' 1973, 6 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'My favourite exhibit at Bletchley was Hut 11 and the replica of Alan Turing’s Colossus, where he once worked with his prep-school hair, scratching his head and making a squelching noise with his mouth when deep in thought.' 2027, 60 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'Death could cut a person off at any moment, but like everyone I pretended I didn’t know this future to be true, and I didn’t let the certainty of death spoil my enjoyment of cricket.’ 1979, 12 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'On my first night as a student I was an idiot. The pubs closed, and with a slick of rain on the cobbles I had a fist-fight.' 1985, 18 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'I used words like tilth, and beneath the comfort-blanket of grey English skies I shied away from the stresses of ambition.' 1999, 32 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'Marriage ought to be more than a refuge, I thought. Better sorry than safe.’ 1993, 26 So many mistakes, so little time. universalturingmachine.co.uk

'Writing, however, was at best a part-time activity, because I also needed to live, to have experiences to note in my diary for use in future books.' 2003, 36 What goes around comes around. universalturingmachine.co.uk

'A random plague revived interest in the meaning of life – a leaflet came through the door inviting me to Zoom with the Jehovah’s Witnesses.’ 2020, 53 Some people never give up. I admire that. universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'Neither branch of the family contained writers, though Mum did love to edit the furniture.' 1973, 6 Feels like there's a perfect arrangement for everything. Maybe there is. universalturingmachine.co.uk

'Write what you know, and on my mind was the high error count of an ordinary life like mine.' 2022, 55 How could it be otherwise? Read the Machine, find out. universalturingmachine.co.uk

'This was the endgame and the opening of the game, a continuation, a loop, and computers of all ages and sizes loved nothing better than a repetitive loop.' 1967, 0 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'I was in awe of love and I ached with love, a teenager greedy for the heightened reality that flagged time travel, incoming from the past, from the future.’ 1984, 17 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'In the actual real-life 2001, when the second plane flew into the second tower, no-one could say for certain whether the minds behind 9/11 were corrupted by too much thinking or not enough.' 2001, 34 Some bits of history cut through. universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'In the USA they had Trump and in Britain we had Brexit, as if being smart suddenly wasn’t important. Human stupidity made itself known, suggesting that at this specific moment we lost sight of certain objectives.’ 2018, 51 universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'I calculated the maths of animal life: approach or avoid, plus or minus, with only a million years of genetic memory to help me with these decisions.' 1969, 2 We're never as alone as we think. universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'I was from the last generation of true believers in the written word, both as a medium for self-expression and an act of resistance. The page was a place where time stopped. What was left? What was written.' Open some pages of stopped time, any time you like. universalturingmachine.co.uk

'A most original masterpiece'. The Universal Turing Machine, as recommended in Engelsberg Ideas. engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-sum...

'I love you. I love you most enthusiastically. I thought about her all the time, which in terms of progress at school wasn’t the optimal use of my brainpower.' 1982, 15 universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'Over her lifetime the Duchess had got so much of what she wanted that she was largely immune to pleasure. She felt at best a mild satisfaction when something was almost as good as it used to be.' 1991, 24 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'In Alexandria I was drugged and robbed, and down the Nile in Aswan a Canadian backpacker sold me to an Egyptian riverboat captain for a lump of hash.' 1985, 18 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'I valued my privilege of books and cricket more than I disliked oppression and pain, first my own and by extension anyone else’s.' 1979, 12 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'I predicted that by 2028 I’d still be frightened by a future I couldn’t see, tempting me to prepare by fearing the worst. I knew this or that bad thing was going to happen (1978, 11; 2003, 36; 2017, 50 and so on).' 2028, 61 universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'God, we were told, could be trusted with the computing. The secret of life as coded into religion involved reckoning and accounting, machine-like calculations reframed as judgments. God assessed the data of a life, then handed out rewards and punishments.' 1981,14 universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'In the small lit clearing of my brief time on earth, I hadn’t helped myself by overdoing the absences. Decoherence was a problem. Did I say this before? I’ll say it again.' 2030, 63 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'Ideally, I’d now accumulate knowledge with maximum efficiency, storing data in an unlimited searchable memory, but though I learned loads of new stuff I couldn’t always remember it.' 1975, 8 universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'It was very easy to drink in Tokyo, which made me dislike myself and was breaking up my face. Also, the Japanese weather had no brilliance. It was one thing or another. The rain set in, and that was rain for the rest of the day.' 2006, 39 universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

"At a dinner I mistook 'la magie noire' for 'l’imaginaire', and insisted with passion that I believed in black magic and would continue to do so until the day I died." 1992, 25 universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/

'What I loved about rugby was that it wasn’t in my head, and didn’t allow me to favour mind over matter. I couldn’t afford to be separate from my body because the back-row forwards out to clatter me were ninety-eight percent matter.' 2002, 35 universalturingmachine.co.uk

'By this age Dad (1959, 20) was a fixture in the Victoria Road office of E.W.Beard Ltd, embarking on a working life featuring an above-average number of Rons.' 1987, 20. universalturingmachine.co.uk

'Chess was more popular when times were unsettled, because playing chess looked clever, in control. Our brains were smart enough to make out invisible patterns and to see the future.' 1972, 5. universalturingmachine.co.uk/utm/