Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Facebook Timeline predict the future?

Have you inserted photos into your timeline in the past? You have, haven't you. Carefully constructing the past on your timeline, the college photos, the old vacations, even the baby photos. Not just personal timelines, but also the world Timeline is being filled in too. Example, did you know you can check out the Timeline of the 2nd World War as it unfolded.

What started off as a sequential Timeline to record your Now moments as you post, has also taken on the role of recording the past. Lets us time travel and reverse into our pasts. That got me thinking... so, if we can Reverse into our past on Timeline, can we then also Fast Forward into our future on Timeline?

Figment of my imagination? Think again - it's hypothetically very possible. How? Facebook's other new feature - the Graph Search.

It's the pattern analysis / predictive technology behind the Graph Search could hold the key to the Future. Facebook analyses your Like!s, posts, comments, locations, and makes predictions that helps your friends search for you, or for you to search for them and practically anything else. Example, "friends who like sushi and are going on vacation to Europe this summer"

As the old saying goes (and also remembering my history teacher in school who repeatedly emphasized the relevance of learning history), "by studying the past, we can predict the future". Facebook could use all that pattern analysis to predict what you might do tomorrow. Based on predictive extrapolation and geographic data, Facebook could hypothetically predict who you might bump into "coincidentally" at the airport. How about predicting the cliched "romance is in the air as the planet of love moves into your star" - that could very well be Facebook knowing someone's secretly in love with you! I can see the marketing caption "Facebook - the new Horoscope, more accurate than any other cos its real science!"

I digress. Predicting personal future on the Timeline is fun but what would make much more impact would be predicting the World. The future of Mankind. It is hypothetically possible.

For now, after happily playing with Timeline the Now, and then Timeline the Past, I'm ready for Timeline the Future. The current Timeline stops at Now. It would be so awesome to be able to just slide it forward into the future, and discover your future life, perhaps you attending your favorite band's concert coming up (hint: advertising dollars!!!). Facebook Timeline the Future would also be so one-up on the upcoming Google Now, which Google is promising would stay one step ahead of you and show you everything you want to know now before you know it. Why just one step ahead when you can fast forward into the future - just slide on the Timeline into the Future - time travel is real - the Future is Now, Now is the Future. I'm ready for Timelining into my Future.


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