Issuepedia:Prediction Registry

Overview

This page is in need of updating. Other projects have emerged which are clearly superior in both method of tracking and quality of content; this article needs to be less about trying to be a registry and more about the idea of a registry. Possibly split into two articles (one for the actual registry, one about the idea). Also, the "about" article should be taken into consideration.

The Prediction Registry is intended as a central repository for tracking data regarding predictions and the people who made them. This is helpful because without a firm record, it's very easy to misremember predictions, and to forget incorrect ones.

Please read About the Prediction Registry for guidelines, purpose, related information, etc.

We hope to have a better user interface eventually, to make it easier to add predictions and track hits/failures of existing predictions.

To Be Investigated

The following predictions and sources have been entered without checking the source material.

• Some commercial predictions: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003699.html
• David Brin (see [1]; prediction sources listed at [2])
  • Earth (novel) (see also Earth by David Brin wiki)
    • Subvocal user-computer interface, which NASA reports inventing in 2003.
    • Predictions Registry
    • EMILYPOST viral politeness programs that target rude internet users.
    • Information sieves - programs that sift the Net for content according to your tastes and priorities, learning as they go. They can either enhance productivity or be used to exclude all incoming information that might disagree with your favorite illusions. (Sound like Rush dittoheads?)
      • ...accompanied by Illusion-breaker programs that pierce these sieves and force Net users to perceive news or opinions outside their tailor-made perception range.
    • GAZER or gravity laser uses singularity "mirrors" to tap the higher energy levels within the Earth and emit tuned, focused, coherent graviton beams.** Uplift Series (series/universe):
    • Uplift genetic engineering of animals (um....)
  • Sundiver (novel set in Uplift Universe):
    • Personality profiling which is now a hot topic using PET scanning... though no one is using yet the inherently superior method of eye-tracking.
    • Waldo Whale lets a human swim like a dolphin or orca.
  • Startide Rising (novel set in Uplift Universe):
    • Waldo walker and tools – allows dolphins to move and work outside of water.
  • Uplift war (novel set in Uplift Universe):
    • Hostage Gas forces a population to voluntarily go to internment camps in order to get antidotes to a toxin.
  • Brightness Reef (novel set in Uplift Universe):
    • WOM or Write Only Memory – a recording device that is required to be carried on all ships or cars, that cannot be read until the owner releases the information, or for an extended time.
  • NatuLife™ (novel)
    • Needle-Gym - A simulation-exercise room with needle floor. A million needles on the bottom of a tiny, closet-size "exercise room" rise and fall to simulate any ground or surface, from a street to forest trail, acting also like a treadmill, so that you can run and feel under your feet any surface that the computer shows you in your simulation goggles.
  • Tank-Farm Dynamo, (short story) Analog, Nov 1983 (at least, I thinik this is what "Tank Farm" refers to):
    • Tether space station. A station in two parts, separated by a 100 mile tether, will orbit the Earth in a way that aligns along a radius, deriving "gravity gradient" forces that let liquids settle and provides a sense of up and down.
  • Dr. Pak's Preschool (novel)
    • A Womb with a View. Intra-utero teaching unit. Installed to help a fetus learn before birth and get a leg-up on other pre-pre preschoolers.
  • Piecework (novel)
    • Fabricows - cattle and other creatures that create gene-designed biomachinery in their wombs. Also complex synthetic chemicals instead of milk. Poor women might also do this, creating super-advanced organic entities the old fashioned way.

Singularity Timetable

• Singularity Timetable predicts a Technological Singularity to happen in 2012:
• 2006 -- True AI
• 2007 -- AI Landrush
• 2009 -- Human-Level AI
• 2011 -- Cybernetic Economy
• 2012 -- Superintelligent AI
• 2012 -- Joint Stewardship of Earth
• 2012 -- Technological Singularity

Links

• Wrong Tomorrow "time vs. pundits": a pundit-oriented prediction registry
• InTrade: a prediction marketplace
• Wikipedia: Prediction market
• The Foresight Exchange Prediction Market: "Sign up free and bet your reputation on the future!"
• Poolitics: place bets on political events
• Best and Worst Punditry of 2005: some short-term technological predictions reviewed
• 2008-05-07 Things That Will Never Happen: a collection of profoundly wrong predictions (I think I remember Jerry Pournelle writing about many of these in the 1970s and 80s -W.)
• 2006-12-14 Tech lessons learned from the wisdom of crowds
• 2006-03-15 Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits
• 1999-03-05 US Patent #6260019: Web-based prediction marketplace by Thomas Craig Courts