LOS ANGELES, Calif. /Neotrope News Network/ — World Mind Network today announced a new Web site which monitors activity to help predict cultural trends. The Internet has given mankind a lot of benefits, but one that may go somewhat unrecognized is its ability to predict where Society is headed, based on tracking every day’s top news stories, Twitter feeds, blog posts, music downloads, videos, books, Web searches, social network posts, and Web sites.
This may not only answer specific questions about the future, but might identify the particular “Zeitgeist,” or spirit of the times, that a certain era evokes.
The monumental task of following all these trends has been undertaken by Osaka University researcher Kenji Ikeda and his students, in collaboration with the World Mind Network and teachers and students from Poland, Kenya, India, and the U.S. The sites they use to track the various topics can be found at www.thetopeverything.net .
There is also a public discussion forum. Individual classrooms attempt to answer specific questions about pop culture, sustainability, politics, science, education, social life, and other subjects based on a daily monitoring of the various trends.
Others are welcome to join the project. It takes about 10 minutes a day to track all the sites, though the time it takes an individual to arrive at a reasonable prediction based on the information is probably longer. The conclusions gathered will be presented in a monograph and Web site appearing in June, and a decision will be made then about continuing the project.
Learn more at: www.thetopeverything.net .
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Story References: World Mind Network, predict cultural trends, Top Everything, Top Web Searches, John Toomey, Osaka University researcher Kenji Ikeda, public forum, classrooms.
