Predicting the future

As I look forward to becoming a father in 2009, I've been thinking about what the future has in store over the next year. This therefore brought me round to think about how companies can use modern methods of communication to try and predict what lies ahead.

Astrology, tarot cards, tea leaves, etc. have now been replaced by: scenario modelling, data-mining and a lot of computation & analysis. However I can help but think that this is still similar to palm reading and its ilk. Why? Well, it still uses one critial part of the system that is fallable... the human component!


Although a single human may be considerably inaccurate at predicting the future (Old Moore, Nostradamas, etc.), is a collective group of humans any good at guessing what happens next? Well, on the basis of the recent financial crisis, it would seem not , but perhaps there is light at the end of the predictive tunnel....

The recent USA Presidential Campaign was