Technology and Prophecy

Everyone has heard of the prophetic predictions of Nostradamus (e.g., fall of the twin towers), and maybe of even ancients making prophecies as it relates to technology. Although these prophecies are intriguing, a topic more interesting to me is the flipside, technology being able to predict the future.

I have been interested in the topic of 2012 prophecy since I watched the special "Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012” on The History Channel. The show stated the date “December 21, 2012” as being the last day of the ancient Mayan civilization’s calendar (Long Count calendar to be exact). There have been many interpretations of what the Mayans were trying to imply. Explanations include everything from a shift in global consciousness, to a devastating catastrophe leading to the end of the world. Not only have modern people predicted the end of the world from Mayan text, but also have seen patterns of the 2012 end date in the I-Ching, bible code, among others.

The next thing I heard on this History Channel special, blew my mind. Not only did humans predict the end of the world on 2012, but a computer program called The Web Bot Project developed in the late 1990s also predicted the end of time or worldwide calamity in 2012. The computer program was developed to help make stock market predictions. Although it might have been a coincidence, the program seemed to accurately predict the rise and fall of the market.

After The History Channel sparked my interest, I read more about how the Web Bot Project technology worked. In summary:

“The technology uses a system of spiders to crawl the Internet and search for keywords, much like a search engine does. When a keyword is located, the bot program takes a snapshot of the text preceding and following the keyword. This snapshot of text is sent to a central location where it is then filtered to define meaning.”

For a more technical explanation, read the article on urbansurvival.com.

After the developers noticed the accurate predictions of the stock market, they became aware of other predictions that were coming true. From Mirror of Aphrodite:

“One of the first accurate predictions from the bot program took place in June of 2001. The program predicted that a life altering event would take place within the next 60-90 days. An occurrence of such proportion that it's effects would be felt worldwide. The program based it's prediction on "web chatter" which ultimately represents the collective unconscious of society. Regrettably, the bot program's prediction proved accurate and the Twin Towers fell on 9/11/2001."

Here are some other Web Bot Project predictions that have come true, from an unconfirmed source:

• It accurately predicted the New York blackout in 2003.
• Thebot stated there would be an attack related to a commemorative event prior to an American 587 crash on Veteran's Day.
• Anthrax attack in Washington DC in 2001.
• Water-rising which lead to the Tsunami in December 2004.
• Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

And from the same source, a summary of the 2008 predictions:

• Catastrophic collapse of the dollar is possible – as the language is active around that concept.
• Some kind of winter natural disaster which causes people to become angry about government response.
• Possibly early elections, or at least calls for that because of anger.
• Global economic collapse possible in fall 2008.

Going back to the prediction of 2012, of course there are some skeptics about the validity of the claim. The general complaint from the skeptics are that the Web Bot is searching all of the published articles on how 2012 is the end of the world, and relating the chatter to its prediction. Read this article for a respectful criticism of the topic.

All this talk about predictions scares me a bit, but will be exciting to see if something really does happen in 2012, be what it may. I also look forward to seeing if the 2008 predictions come true, as devastating as they may be. For now, unfortunately, the Web Bot Project has been put on hold for lack of funding, but as we look forward, we can now consider the impact of predictive technology on our future.

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2012 doomsday future predictions prophecy search engine technology web bot
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