Asimov's Psychohistory Becoming a Reality?

northernboy writes "Today's LA Times has an article describing how a Wikileaks data dump from Afghanistan plus some advanced algorithms are allowing accurate predictions about the behavior of large groups of people. From the article: 'The programmers used simple code to extract dates and locations from about 77,000 incident reports that detailed everything from simple stop-and-search operations to full-fledged battles. The resulting map revealed the outlines of the country's ongoing violence: hot spots near the Pakistani border but not near the Iranian border, and extensive bloodshed along the country's main highway. They did it all in just one night. Now one member of that group has teamed up with mathematicians and computer scientists and taken the project one major step further: They have used the WikiLeaks data to predict the future.' Considering they did not discriminate between types of skirmish, but only when and where there was violence, this seems like an amazing result. It looks like our robotic overlords will have even less trouble controlling us than I previously thought."

Re:It can't be reality now that you published it.

[arthurpaliden]

No that was "Fight Club".

Re:Macro versus Micro

[HornWumpus]

A permanent Franco-German political union called,,,wait for it,,,Germany.

Re:Other uses?

[methano]

I read the Foundation Trilogy about 40 years ago and have been terrified ever since that this type of technology would be used in marketing. Thank goodness we're only using it in war.

Re:Other uses?

[Teresita]

That's very true! In the Bible a prophet like Ezekiel would "prophesy" that the city of Tyre would be sacked, and low and behold, three centuries later, Alexander II sacked that sucker. Tyre sacked, who woulda thunk it?