It sounds basically like the guy claims to have manufactured a Magic 8 Ball and we're all supposed to be impressed.
Leaving aside all of the other common sense arguements here, if this machine is supposed to predict things accuratly 5-8 years in the future, how did he actually test this, unless he claims to have used it 5-8 years ago and had the device since then. In which case there are questions about how big the sample audience was, what was predicted, and the accuracy, etc... none of which is information he's providing, just that we're supposed to take his word for it.
It also raises questions about possible futures, and of course whether he's saying you can alter anything you see based on this device.
For the most part I'd imagine the only real "use" for this would be to copyright it so nobody else can examine it, claim you have all kinds of evidence that it works, and then charge people huge amounts of money to have their future told without much in the way of repercussions since it will take 5-8 years for any of that to come to pass.
I believe the scientologists did something similar with their machines, they claimed they can solve all of these problems, but are copyrighted so nobody out of scientology can really examine them or tell much about them, attempts to pry into it meet with lawsuits like most attempts to examine their documents, texts, and equipment. Thus while the goverment can say there is no confirmed medical or scientific value from their devices, the scientologists can claim there is internally, hiding behind how nobody except for them know how they work or are properly used.
My big question here is why this was newsworthy, other than a few laughs.
That said I do think he's right on the money about the copyright problems at least, not that I expect his device would be worth stealing anyway.
Who knows though, maybe the world is about to change radically, I'm not holding my breath though.
