Predicciones

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One of the more oddball items that has come across my desk lately (and that's saying a lot, people) is something called the Web Bot Project. What is the Web Bot Project? Well, according to the most reputable sources I could find on the Web - which was tricky since most of the sites talking about the Web Bot project are somewhat questionable - the Web Bot Project is basically this:

A system of spiders, agents, and wanderers that hop around the Internet, much like a search engine spider does to index material for a search engine database, and look for specific words, kinds of words, key phrases, etc.. It especially targets discussion groups, translation sites, and places were regular people post a lot of content, such as blogs, social networking sites, and forums.

The Web Bot Project has come up in the news lately because supposedly (and that's a BIG supposedly) it's been able to predict recent events, especially the earthquake yesterday. Originally, it was created to help figure out good stock picks, but the original creators found that the Web bots were bringing back so much chatter/buzz on other topics, especially topics that were either in the news or topics that soon WERE in the news, that it took on a whole new life.

The biggest news from the Web Bot lately is a look at 2012 predictions, specifically, the world ending in 2012. You can read the latest Web bot predictions at www.urbansurvival.com or www.halfpasthuman.com. Specifically, the predictions for 2012 include "an untimely demise for millions by 2012, brought upon by some combination of pandemics, economic collapse, breakdown of health care and unknown energies from space (source).

I'm not a big fan of these Nostradamus-ish predictions, and I definitely do not encourage an end of the world mentality. However, I do find the Web Bot Project intriguing not for it's so-called paranormal abilities, but simply for the way it's pulling in a Zeitgeist of sorts from the Web at large. I'm hoping that more data from the project will be released that does NOT have anything to do with the end of the world and more to do with tapping into the overall consciousness of the World Wide Web.