by cynthianews

In Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, the future of masses of people can be predicted with "psychohistory," a method of predicting future poitical and social trends, using a device called the "Prime Radiant." In the 1950s, there wasn't the math or the computational power available to make such a thing reality. Now there might be.

Supercomputers, such as the Nautilus at the University of Tennessee's Center for Data Analysis and Visualization, may have brought the world closer to Asimov's vision, though it is still early days. The key is seeking paterns in massive amounts of data and being able to visualize them. Kaley Leetaru, assistant director for text and digital media analytics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, did just that.