A look into the future may no longer require palm readings, star alignments or tarot cards after the release of a new technology purporting to be an all-encompassing oracle of the future.
The Swedish-American software company, Recorded Future, has developed a program that specialises in predictive analysis and with backers including the CIA investment arm In-Q-Tel, it is hoped that averting terrorist attacks could be one of its uses.
“It is a useful aid but prediction is always difficult. The world we face has wicked problems, and it’s important to understand that people like (Anders Behring) Breivik and Al-Qaeda are pretty savvy in concealing themselves through code words and disguised meanings,” says Magnus Ranstorp, Research Director of the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College (Försvarshögskolan) and one of Sweden’s foremost experts on Islamic terrorism.
Using what they coin as a ”temporal analytics engine,” their forecasting tool helps analysts predict events and trends by scanning hundreds of thousands of high-quality news publications, blogs, public niche sources, trade magazines, government web sites, financial databases and more.
