Mankind has been obsessed with the future. There are many who are fascinated by history but nothing intrigues as much as the future. No one has got an iota of clue what’s going to happen next and yet we have learned to predict weather and we can foretell when certain celestial events would happen. Is that actually predicting the future or is it simply putting patterns into an equation and determining when the events would just happen again?
Weather forecasting is surely a different league because of all the mapping and satellite imagery that is available for the predictions. Celestial events that do follow a pattern are also quite easy to determine. But predicting the future is a different ballgame.
That is exactly the game that the Predictables project aims to win. The Predictables project is otherwise simple. It intends to observe patterns in a person’s life and everything that one does and assessing those patterns a complex algorithm would predict what the future outcome of certain actions or plans are going to be. In a way, one can know what’s going to happen in the future.
The Predictables project has two integrated aspects. One aspect deals with an app that records every digital data pertaining to an individual, including what he or she does, social connections, whereabouts and everything associated with life that has a digital footprint. The second aspect deals with the interaction of the output or prediction of the future with the individual using wearable gadgets such as a smart watch or a pico projector. At the crux of this project is an extremely complicated algorithm that has the power to observe tangible patterns in the data accumulated and after assessing those data the algorithm has to make some sensible forecast for the future. If this technology is to become a reality, then it can have implications in an individual’s personal life, career, relationships, health and everything around the person.
But does the technology work and is such an algorithm already developed? No one knows. The technology is being developed and there is no case study or test result to determine if the algorithm is even close to working its magic. If the technology becomes a reality then it can be a path breaking piece of innovation. If it doesn’t, then it would be another case of all claims and hoopla with little merit in the vision.
