Web Bot

Web Bot, or the Web Bot Project, refers to an Internet bot software program that is claimed to be able to predict future events by tracking keywords entered on the Internet. It was created in 1997, originally to predict stock market trends. The creator of the Web Bot Project, Clif High, along with his associate George Ure, who call themselves "The Time Monks", keep the technology and algorithms largely secret and sell the predictions via the website halfpasthuman.com.

Methodology

High and Ure say that the Web Bot works by using a form of the Wisdom of Crowds, with spiders that search the internet for about 300,000 keywords with emotional context and record the preceding and following words to create a "snapshot." Through this, the technology is claimed to be able to examine the collective unconscious of the world as a whole. It is thus said to be able to predict catastrophic events 60 to 90 days in advance. 看

Predictions

Claimed hits

The Web Bot is claimed to have predicted several events prior to them occurring, most notably the September 11 attacks and the 2003 Northeastern United States blackout. However, many believe the predictions are vague and, at best, pseudoscientific.

• September 11 attacks - In June 2001 Web Bot predicted that a catastrophic event would occur within the next 60–90 days.
• American Airlines Flight 587
• Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
• Northeast Blackout of 2003 -
• 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
• Hurricane Katrina and its devastation
• Dick Cheney hunting incident

Misses

• A massive earthquake in Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest was predicted to occur on 12 December 2008.
• A "global coastal event" in mid-2009, which Ure and High said that they recommended people to stay away from coastal areas.
• A complete collapse of the US dollar beginning in 2009.
• October 25, 2009 - A catastrophe starts on October 25, 2009. It could have been that the H1N1 flu virus reaches a level of extreme lethality, the US dollar completely collapses, or Israel bombs Iran. In reaction to this crisis, administration of U.S. President Barack Obama would have been thrown into major chaos ten days later.
• The stock market crash in late-September 2008, and the recession that followed.

Future predictions

• 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 reversing of Earth's magnetic poles or a small series of nuclear attacks leading up to a major attack on this day. The prediction does not necessarily call for a complete end of the world.

Reception

The History Channel has discussed Web Bot in its special Nostradamus Effect and on other shows featuring predictions about the end of the world. A Globe and Mail journalist noted that "What interests me more than the bot's accuracy (of which I'm skeptical), is the relentless negativity of its projections. According to the bot, the future is always bleak and steadily worsening."

Tom Chivers in the Daily Telegraph notes three criticisms of the project: "the internet might plausibly reveal group knowledge about the stock market or, conceivably, terror attacks [but] it would be no more capable of predicting a natural disaster than would a Google search, ... the predictions are so vague as to be meaningless, [and] the prophecies become self-distorting."