Web Bot Algorithm for the Future Stops at 2012

Things to Come (1936) © London Film Productions (based on H. G. Wells's 1933 book, read it here). Image Source: Love for Life.

In a January 2011 episode of Brad Meltzer's Decoded, Web Bot expert Mel Fabregas casually asserted that "remote viewers cannot see beyond" 2012. He then spoke of the use of the Web Bot.  The Web Bot is an online bot, conceived in 1993 and created in 1997 to predict the stock market.  From there, its creators began using it to scan changing emotional values as correlated to key words on the Internet.  After crunching the data with something called Asymmetric Language Trend Analysis, they have begun to predict the future.  This software is what creator Clif High calls, "superset theory in complex aggregation at multiple different levels."  The closely-guarded Bot algorithms were developed by High and George Ure.  These self-proclaimed 'Time Monks' have made various predictions, with some success.  They claim to have predicted 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.  Their Website is Half Past Human. Clif High discusses the Bot's predictions, which he calls 'future viewing' via his blog, here, with the following disclaimer:

"Please note that our interpretations are provided as entertainment only. We are to be held harmless for universe placing substance behind our words. Or not, as it so chooses. The interpretations provide a broad brush view of the future over the next few years. The broad view of the future is based on set theory and provides a collection of linguistic clues which can be used to forecast developing trends." 

Clif High does assert that the Web Bot generated claims are, "twice as good as chance would allow."  The 2010/2011 (rather wild and woolly) report is entitled The Shape of Things to Come - Volume Zero.  You can see a report on the Bot here.

High's and Ure's future predictions include:

• Major catastrophe in 2012 - The Web Bot has gained most of its notoriety for contributing to the 2012 phenomenon by predicting that a cataclysm will devastate the planet in the year 2012, possibly a reversal of Earth's magnetic poles or a small series of nuclear attacks leading up to a major attack during the year. The prediction does not call for a complete end of the world.
• A second depression, triggered by mass layoffs, bankruptcies, and the popping of the derivatives bubble.
• A "data gap" has been found in 2012 running through May 2013. One explanation is that "our civilization gets knocked back to a pre-electronic state," such as brought about by devastating solar activity.
• A new benign form of capitalism will emerge during 2017-2020.

In particular, they anticipate serious world tensions increasing in early-mid March of this year, which you can see discussed here and here.  You can hear interviews with Clif High on Youtube here.  Clif High flirts easily, uncritically and dubiously with global conspiracy theories to understand why world events are predictable; he also wonders whether you can change the future if you have a strong sense that something specific will happen.

Now, their whole system rests on one fascinating assumption.  High calls himself a "radical linguist."  And the algorithms and analyses are based upon the hypotheses that "changes in language precede changes in behavior," and hence, changes in history.   I have blogged about how vocabulary changes after huge historical events, but not before.  The Web Bot creators' assumption sees the Internet as a new collective consciousness, or unconsciousness, whose nebulous anxieties can be pegged against spiraling and compressing 'fractal time' to see potentials converging into actual events.