@rainerann Not disagreeing with what you are saying because its only right that everything should be questioned. I don't usually go over-board with little signs in movies or TV shows, as predictive programming, but Alan's description does hold. The best example I can give you is; there was an attack in the UK not too long ago, and some people commented that the only way to stop these attacks dead in the tracks is if GCHQ (think NSA) did something about it. It was so ridiculous to me that someone was suggesting pre-crime tech should be rolled out. Now, this is best exemplied by the movie Minority Report. So, either that person was so naive as to suggest that, disregarding other consequences, or s/he was a govt operative putting a suggestion out there, so people can mull over it and possibly force the govt to roll it out in an effort to cut crime.
Of course, you do realize that nowadays, every attack chips away at freedoms.
When it comes to predictive programming, this is definitely one of my favorites:
The film, Running Man
"In 2017, after a worldwide economic collapse, the United States has become a totalitarian police state , censoring all cultural activity. The U.S. government pacifies the populace by broadcasting game shows where convicted criminals fight for their lives, including the gladiator-style The Running Man" (Wikipedia)
Then you have this
I see 9/11 as an event of the same magnitude as the Kennedy assassination. A dark cloud over society followed both events. Both were meant to transform society (with 9/11 meant for a worldwide audience) and as I've said before, its not a coincidence that it happened at the turn of the century, because it would set the tone (a dark one) for this century. It was a ritual, so they had to say something about it. So I thought these would interest you and Helioform (btw, any evidence on the James and Ewen Cameron connection?)
The Semiotic Deception of 9/11
And
http://web.archive.org/web/20030426192215/http://www.wright.edu/~elliot.gaines/Indeday.htm
And this A Space Odyssey monolith showing up, heralding changes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1100524.stm
In the process of looking up more about the cover of the Economist that you mention, I found an interesting article that reiterates that the present definition of predictive programming is not actually even covering the scope of what many are trying to claim when they are finding these coincidences.
https://fusionlacedillusions.com/index.php/2016/06/14/holy-crap-predictive-programming-economist-shows-pulse-shooting-2016-cover/
In the article, they introduce examples of predictive programming as they would be associated with something that could be considered a false flag after the fact like Sandy Hook, 9-11, etc. So, in theory, the definition of predictive programming should be modified to include that predictive programming is dependent on events that are within the control of a so-to-speak puppet master. Therefore, the scope of what can be considered predictive programming is narrow to include those events that are controlled for a specific function.
This reiterates for me that I do not reject the strange coincidences that are being suggested, but I don't think the definition that has been accepted is holding up as more of these things are introduced to the discussion. The definition is essentially like the plum pudding model was to understanding the structure of the atom early on. It recognized the existence of the atom and the presence of smaller particles within the atom, but it mushed them up so that the atom looked like a meatball rather than a miniature solar system.
As a result, it would seem that what we are calling predictive programming is potentially functioning as a sort of coded message system, and the average person does not have the cipher. Let's just say these false flags were presented in these movies. Did this change the response of the public? I don't think there was a noticeable change because as a method of changing behavior, this process has many weaknesses.
Therefore, if we consider these things to be messages sent to a broad network who understand them in a way that the general public doesn't, outsiders may or may not be influenced by this process, but in most cases, this influence is not going to exceed the influence that a runner on second would experience if he could see the signals the catcher was sending the pitcher.
These signals mean nothing to him. He can do nothing with this information, so this would essentially be ignored. In the same way, most of these occurrences are being more or less ignored by the general public who has no use for them so this process does not function as a successful way to influence the public to do much of anything. I believe that the reality that the majority of the public will ignore these things the same way they would ignore a sign written in Mandarin if they didn't speak Mandarin, is why the subconscious is so often referenced to support the present definition of predictive programming.
Why aren't people noticing these things in popular media? Because they aren't noticing it on a conscious level, is the claim that is being made.
Unfortunately, a study of literature and media doesn't support this presumption. In the early years of Hollywood, they were a lot of controversies that was resolved by the Rogers & Hammerstein era. The shooting of JFK and the Vietnam war were more than likely what changed this, but media will experience trends based on the attention the public give it. People choose their trends that identify the era's as they are remembered, not the other way around.
The book Ender's Game is a very good example of what I am talking about. I think many people would have never heard of Ender's Game if they hadn't made it into a movie a few years ago, because the style and the concept of the book were not what was popular at the time it was published. Now, dystopian novels are trending, so Ender's Game has gotten a second lease on life.
In fiction writing classes, the author of Ender's Game is well known for his style of writing. He says in the introduction, "the novel's very clarity may make it more challenging, simply because the story's vision is so relentlessly plain. It was important to her, and to others, to believe that children don't actually think or speak the way the children in Ender's Game think and speak. Yet I knew--I knew--that this was one of the truest things about Ender's Game. In fact, I realized in retrospect that this may indeed be part of the reason why it was so important to me."
Many of the modern dystopian novels follow this author's style of writing the same way something will be a new fashion and many designers will modify this style in some way while it remains popular to the public. Why does the public find something like Minority Report fascinating could be a reflection of where society is spiritually. This essentially represents some sort of search for truth rather than the programmed state of mind that individuals have control over because of their own free agency.
In addition to this, moving on to the subject of Minority Report again, this is a which came first scenario as well. I think because many people haven't taken fiction writing courses, they assume there is some magic to fiction writing and that these people are conjuring things that don't have real-life examples. In fact, a good rule of thumb is to write what you know and people like the author of Moby Dick and Ender's Game had real-life examples that were the inspiration for their story all along.
In the introduction to Ender's Game, he admits an awareness of something like the Battle Room in the story existing in reality already and the writer of Moby Dick spent some time on a whaling ship before he wrote the story. All stories have always mirrored some part of life that already existed. This is nothing new. So a lot of these examples where there is a fiction story that is a counterpart to something that is actually happening has always been a useful way to write stories. It wasn't something that was invented to serve the malicious goals of predictive programming.
In some cases, like in the case of Minority Report again, this could reiterate the point that I was making about government-sponsored media and the potential that 9-11 had something to do with a data collection process that could, in theory, be used to try to predict crime. I think understanding early programs like ARPANET would be more a more productive way to fill in the holes regarding the intention of this phenomenon than the somewhat superstitious discussion that is common to this subject.
I think people often sound the way I would imagine people sounded when they were trying to justify that someone was a witch who needed to be burned at a stake because she committed adultery or did something that became difficult to understand because of a lack of information, which created a sensationalized version of what was happening in its place. As a result, I think predictive programming is merely a sensationalized version of something that is actually happening across different forms of media. Sorry, this was so long.
To consider this after you go through all the other references that slip through the fingertips like sand, it just is ridiculous. I mean seriously, there were two other people throughout school that had the exact same birthday as I did and I grew up in a town that was smaller than 50,000 people. What are the odds?