Future Now is a predictive engine that is currently being perfected by the Ecclesia. Using mass amounts of data inputted from countless sources, including directly from peoples' Life Path accounts, the ultimate goal is for Future Now to be able to accurately predict the immediate future and the far future with perfect certainty.
A massive core processor for the Future Now project. Artwork by Julian Faylona.
Future Now is built atop the bones of the Global Mind Project. The Ecclesia aim for it to be the most highly sophisticated and accurate predictive engine the world has ever seen. It is secretly fed with mass amounts of data. That data is either stolen from a variety of sources like the Mirror, or secretly directed towards the project by members of the Ecclesia from users of LifePath. The Ecclesia are actively working on a plan to combat climate change using Future Now to try to forecast both weather events, and the short and medium term future effects of various plans. As of right now, Future Now is not properly equipped to predict the very far future and the very immediate future. For every year it goes into the future, the predictions become less accurate and less clear. Likewise, it is not able to predict, for example, what any human being will do in the very next minute. The ultimate goal is to master these two untapped predictive aspects and make sure that humanity is never threatened again. Future Now will also keep the Ecclesia from being challenged. Like the Ecclesia, Future Now is a secret that exists only in rumours amongst the general populace, however the technology exists in other consumer forms such as Life Path.
Future Now collects the world's data and uses their patented technology to create the most accurate predictor of future events. Future Now cannot literally see in to the future. It is able to estimate things based on information about future activities it has been fed. Futures have created agreements that go decades in to the future and placed strict control over the present, creating a script that everybody must follow. Through a collection of information and a flexing of their muscles to keep the world in order, the Ecclesia are able to make accurate predictions.
Mirror Industries are the world's largest provider of intelligence gathering systems for governments. Their suite provides both an interface for searching, viewing and accessing a real time model of their citizens activity. The Mirror Engine has built into it protocols for accessing the data that are based on their clients legal frameworks. This means that if a police officer requires a warrant to search a suspect's home then they can’t view the information without a warrant. The Mirror Engine is built on top of the proprietary World Modelling engine owned by Future Now which makes the exchange of resources easy. Governments are given access to Future Now’s predictive insight in exchange for the safe and secure utilization of their data. So a police officer can access a rendering of the anticipated future provided they have a warrant for this information. As a result law enforcement are able to “time travel” into the future Mirror and work cases.
Future Now relies on the method of determinism. Life Path, and in turn the Ecclesia, have monopoly over predictive analysis and how they use their power to enforce their vision of how events will unfold. The Ecclesia essentially see their predictive success as more of a self fulfilling prophecy on a global scale.
As individuals are encouraged to provide Life Path a detailed map of their future plans, the future is being bought up and there is greater pressure to snatch up opportunities now. That is why, for example, people make a real estate deal a decade in advance, because they may be planning to move to a retirement home that has already been designed and built in the future and they can’t reserved it without the funds from the real estate deal. This burnout from too much future prognostication is called "future fatigue." As a result the average everyday person lives their life with a constant awareness of the circumstances of their future lives. This entire process is aided with products like Life Path, another product owned by Future Now that effectively functions as a brokerage of opportunities in the future. Nearly every product, service on the market can be purchased through one's Life Path account, and if you wait until the present to find what you need then you will be paying a premium for it if it's still available. So there is a constant pressure for people to think about and live inside of the future that Future Now has “predicted”.
This has led to some internal criticism from select Ecclesian members. The success of Future Now working relies on the gambit that the currency of Futures will never crash, Life Path will always be used, and that long-term agreements made to secure the future are ones that can be trusted. These critics feel that this is still too many variable and that a reliance on soft power such as this is too risky. Some have gone as far to say that Future Now is not really predicting anything and just telling the Ecclesia what it wants to hear. However, the number of these critics are small and Future Now has the utmost support of the Ecclesia.
Combined members of the Ecclesia have a controlling interest in Future Now and it’s believed that Future Now’s board of directors are all high ranking members. There is a strong relationship between the Ecclesia and Future Now such that some believe that the two institutions are the mirror image of one another.
Future Now’s technology is utilized throughout the new colonies and used to manage mining rights centuries into the future. Also, mining operators plan out their operations, and supply chains decades in advance utilizing custom Future Now interfaces. Though the further one travels from Earth the greater the chance that Future Rights will not be adhered to or enforced.