NOV 21, 2011 - Crushing Cost of Predicting the Future describes a novel, technological method of divination. Whereas gazing into the heavens or a teacup or poking around some giblets goes back millennia, the method described in Crushing Cost of Predicting the Future is totally high-tech. The technique, employed by a company called Recorded Future, entails searching 100,000 Web pages an hour, looking for statements about the future with an eye toward creating "a 'temporal index' that suggests trends." "The Web has come to reflect the world," says Christopher Ahlberg, co-founder and chief executive of Recorded Future. "We can use that to predict things." The simple fact that some percentage of online statements about the future are astrological in nature and therefore might get caught up in the kind of Web search that is the heart of the Recorded Futures technique begs a question: will the statements about the future that go into this technique include astrological pronouncements? And if so, does the notion of an infinite regression come to anyone else's mind?
