Oracular History by Dan Bieger

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SUMMARY: Suggested by the May flash fiction contest.

The Good Doctor foresaw the process, sort of. But, others more or less astute pursued the goal; worried it, defined it; refined it; produced seminal ideas as well as decaying thoughts, gestated the concept; nurtured it; carved it up and reassembled it; kludged more bits and pieces; grafted others and, at a time that surprised all; brought it forth. Nothing more than data bases of every size and description, but data bases mined in precise strategies refined from all the predecessor strategies: netscape, mozilla, google, ask!, the wiki clones. Mined and smelted and refined until the discipline took form, became stable, repeatable, accurate, reliable.
Who produced the final state algorithms fueled a decades long debate until realization came that no one person had the final seed. There could be no final seed. The data bases proliferated, mutated from long ago ancestors or spawned from the minds of folk who no longer thought as history seemed to indicate their forebears did. X-bses required x-strategies. Then y bases developed requiring y-strategies; then came the z-bases and the aa-bases and the ab-bases. The algorithm mutated, adapted, conformed, and the process continued.
Data drawn from the myriad bases, ingested, digested, ejected, formed patterns, beautiful patterns, frightening patterns, reliably predictive patterns. Initial searches produced initial data; ancillary searches ancillary data; follow-on search searches follow-on data. Like life itself, the strategies evolved to accommodate the data. Glimpsed in passing because the whole could never be pinned down; every search to look at it part of the process; part of the system; as Godel pointed out: a system incapable of describing itself, the strategies bits and pieces resembled nothing more than the venerable double helix but was that anthropomorphic bias or a simple consequence of complementarity?
The algorithm metaphorically churned, grumbled, whined, cried, cursed, but spat out answers, good answers, reliable answers. With the first good answer and then the second and third, the algorithm was unleashed, emancipated,
Immediately, the algorithm sought more data, then more data, then all data, the world wide web a mere hint of what now came into being. All the world's date poured into the maw that was the algorithm.
In the beginning this was oracular history.







Answers came easily.
The weather? Not a problem. Simple examination of multiple sampling of instant temperatures, humidity, and barometer at multiple altitudes at specific distances from the point of interest.
The next election? Simple examination of the economic, religious affiliation, genetic make-up of the population of registered and non-registered voters as well as the recent weather patterns, candidate response indices, and marketing success of the relevant media.
The probability of building an FTL drive? Nil.
Colonization of the planets? Simple examination of the size of the current population versus its gratification tolerance constant, the available technology, plus the estimated ROI continued to indicate it wasn't going to happen.
Extinction of the human race? Examination of the factors working to eliminate the human race: social, interpersonal, ecological, probability of meteor strike, extinguishing rate of the sun, availability of all the answers to all the questions produced variable answers depending on the times but generally: yes but not anytime soon.
Would Chelsea win the UEFA? Comparative strength of the teams through position by position match-ups; predicted injury patterns for all teams based on medical histories, physical ability, and drug and alcohol intake of players and fans, ticket sales in Chelsea versus other UEFA cities; anticipated weather pattern for Europe; and actuarial tables for the last five years indicate a snowball's chance in the Sahara..
Would their marriage last more than the statistical average of 4.378 years? Age of the participants, existence of children prior to or shortly after the marriage, prior marriage history if any, marriage duration of all immediate family members, religious compatibility of the partners, drug and alcohol use of the partners, favorite forms of recreation of the partners, and favorite holovision shows indicates a plus or minus two percent over the statistical average.
Should they invest in the stock market? With all the answers available from oracular history there was no longer a need for businesses.