Developed in the late 90s to predict stock market activity, the Web Bot Project is a type of software (generally known as a bot) that tracks Web pages for keywords and other significant text. The information gathered from various Internet chatter supposedly provides insight into what larger groups are thinking of or talking about.
Soon, however, the creators of the project, Clif High and George Ure, started touting the technology's ability to predict the future. Ure claimed, for instance, that the bots predicted a "world-changing event" in the months after June 2001. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, seem to match up with such a claim. Some people believe that, since then, the Web Bot Project has predicted several major events in recent history, including Hurricane Katrina, the ongoing economic crisis in the U.S., and even a hunting accident involving former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney. And let's not forget, of course, that the bots appear to predict a cataclysmic event on none other than Dec. 21, 2012.
But critics of the controversial system equate it with nothing more than a modern reading from a so-called psychic. Many additional predictions have been completely wrong, and the predictions made by the technology are usually so vague that people can conveniently fit them onto events after they occur. Also, the fact that so many people are probably writing about a 2012 apocalypse most likely skews the system.