Victor Van Rij Ircg Wildcards24 10presentation Abu D Abi[1]Victor Van Rij
The document discusses horizon scanning and wild cards as tools for shaping desirable futures and preparing for potential shocks and disruptions. It defines wild cards as low-probability but high-impact events that could significantly alter society and the future course of events. Both naturally-caused and human-caused wild cards are examined, with the latter being influenced by ideas, communication, and the potential for self-fulfilling prophecies. The value of wild card identification is discussed as a way to increase policy resilience and monitor early signals of disruptive changes. However, human-caused wild cards also pose risks if used to propagate undesirable narratives. Careful analysis of motivations and cultural contexts is needed when horizon scanning for potential wild cards.
This document discusses future foresight and trends. It begins by noting how much has changed in just 20 years and some predictions for the next 10 years, including advances in areas like biotechnology, nanotechnology, and renewable energy. It then discusses concepts like megatrends, weak signals, scenarios, and different levels of foresight from macro to micro. Various tools for futures work are presented, along with sources for finding weak signals and trends. Population aging and its economic impacts are highlighted. The importance of foresight for strategic management is stressed, and motivations of future employees are considered.
Predicting mid-range global futures (2005-2050)Danila Medvedev
The document discusses various approaches to thinking about and predicting the future, including time periods to consider, common visions of the future, challenges, and who engages in future thinking. It notes limitations of science fiction, futurology, individual futurists, and short-term corporate predictions, and advocates for a systematic, technology-focused approach incorporating exponential trends to more accurately envision the mid-range future from 2005 to 2050.
Victorvan Rij Sesti weaksignals Cognitive Enhancement2010Victor Van Rij
The document discusses cognitive enhancement and identifies weak signals related to its development. It covers:
1) Past and potential future pathways of cognitive enhancement, including social/educational and biological methods.
2) Hopes for enhancement like preventing impairment, and fears around risks to humanity.
3) A search identifying 40 weak signals, mostly in biology and tools, with few on social/psychological impacts.
4) Key emerging issues relate to neuroimaging, implants, drugs and genetics raising concerns around ethics, equality and eugenics.
5) Further analysis is needed on costs/benefits of different enhancement methods and priorities between performance vs. development. weak signals were somewhat limited in identifying societal and economic impacts.
Future of education: Learning and teaching in an ICT revolutionising worldVictor Van Rij
The document discusses the need for visionary policies and teaching approaches to prepare society for an increasingly technology-driven world. It summarizes that previous communication revolutions transformed society and education needs. To thrive in today's ICT revolution, students must learn digital literacy, collaboration, and continuous skills updating. However, not all will achieve these competencies without support. Teachers require training and schools need equipment upgrades. Curricula must incorporate fast-changing ICT skills. Significant investments are needed from governments and industry to implement new education strategies and technologies.
The document discusses horizon scanning, which involves systematically searching for potential issues that could have a high impact on important matters. It compares horizon scanning processes in the UK, Netherlands, and Denmark. While the aims and methods differ slightly, there is a large overlap in the issues identified. Horizon scanning can feed into policymaking and research agendas but challenges include prioritizing issues and connecting to other scans. The document argues that horizon scanning should involve democratic, participatory processes to better serve knowledge democracy and governance.
The document summarizes the objectives and activities of the SESTI project, which is funded by the European Commission to research methods for identifying emerging science and technology issues. The project aims to assess scanning tools and methods for early warnings and explore ways to connect scanning results to the policymaking community. SESTI focuses on healthcare, energy, and other sectors, examining organizational changes, science/technology developments, and public perceptions. It defines "wild cards" as surprising events that could significantly impact the future and discusses identifying and analyzing potential wild cards through published narratives and discussion of them.
Victor Van Rij Ircg Wildcards24 10presentation Abu D Abi[1]Victor Van Rij
The document discusses horizon scanning and wild cards as tools for shaping desirable futures and preparing for potential shocks and disruptions. It defines wild cards as low-probability but high-impact events that could significantly alter society and the future course of events. Both naturally-caused and human-caused wild cards are examined, with the latter being influenced by ideas, communication, and the potential for self-fulfilling prophecies. The value of wild card identification is discussed as a way to increase policy resilience and monitor early signals of disruptive changes. However, human-caused wild cards also pose risks if used to propagate undesirable narratives. Careful analysis of motivations and cultural contexts is needed when horizon scanning for potential wild cards.
This document discusses future foresight and trends. It begins by noting how much has changed in just 20 years and some predictions for the next 10 years, including advances in areas like biotechnology, nanotechnology, and renewable energy. It then discusses concepts like megatrends, weak signals, scenarios, and different levels of foresight from macro to micro. Various tools for futures work are presented, along with sources for finding weak signals and trends. Population aging and its economic impacts are highlighted. The importance of foresight for strategic management is stressed, and motivations of future employees are considered.
Predicting mid-range global futures (2005-2050)Danila Medvedev
The document discusses various approaches to thinking about and predicting the future, including time periods to consider, common visions of the future, challenges, and who engages in future thinking. It notes limitations of science fiction, futurology, individual futurists, and short-term corporate predictions, and advocates for a systematic, technology-focused approach incorporating exponential trends to more accurately envision the mid-range future from 2005 to 2050.
Victorvan Rij Sesti weaksignals Cognitive Enhancement2010Victor Van Rij
The document discusses cognitive enhancement and identifies weak signals related to its development. It covers:
1) Past and potential future pathways of cognitive enhancement, including social/educational and biological methods.
2) Hopes for enhancement like preventing impairment, and fears around risks to humanity.
3) A search identifying 40 weak signals, mostly in biology and tools, with few on social/psychological impacts.
4) Key emerging issues relate to neuroimaging, implants, drugs and genetics raising concerns around ethics, equality and eugenics.
5) Further analysis is needed on costs/benefits of different enhancement methods and priorities between performance vs. development. weak signals were somewhat limited in identifying societal and economic impacts.
Future of education: Learning and teaching in an ICT revolutionising worldVictor Van Rij
The document discusses the need for visionary policies and teaching approaches to prepare society for an increasingly technology-driven world. It summarizes that previous communication revolutions transformed society and education needs. To thrive in today's ICT revolution, students must learn digital literacy, collaboration, and continuous skills updating. However, not all will achieve these competencies without support. Teachers require training and schools need equipment upgrades. Curricula must incorporate fast-changing ICT skills. Significant investments are needed from governments and industry to implement new education strategies and technologies.
The document discusses horizon scanning, which involves systematically searching for potential issues that could have a high impact on important matters. It compares horizon scanning processes in the UK, Netherlands, and Denmark. While the aims and methods differ slightly, there is a large overlap in the issues identified. Horizon scanning can feed into policymaking and research agendas but challenges include prioritizing issues and connecting to other scans. The document argues that horizon scanning should involve democratic, participatory processes to better serve knowledge democracy and governance.
The document summarizes the objectives and activities of the SESTI project, which is funded by the European Commission to research methods for identifying emerging science and technology issues. The project aims to assess scanning tools and methods for early warnings and explore ways to connect scanning results to the policymaking community. SESTI focuses on healthcare, energy, and other sectors, examining organizational changes, science/technology developments, and public perceptions. It defines "wild cards" as surprising events that could significantly impact the future and discusses identifying and analyzing potential wild cards through published narratives and discussion of them.
Sesti project: Global Sustainable Energy optionsVictor Van Rij
This presentation gives the result of the emerging issues analysis of the SESTI project on the energy domain in 2010. It provides the questions around 5 of the less well known future sustainable options/risks that were discussed in the project. The topics that were addressed are still worth while to review today.
These topics were :
1. Enhancement of the photosynthetic cycle on global scale to provide all food, energy and maintain biodiversity (briefly biomimics)
2. Use of desert areas for gaining solar energy (the DESERTEC scheme)
3. Hybrid nuclear fission-fusion to speed up nuclear fusion
4. The unknown risks of going deeper and further for energy mining
5. The unknown risks of and hydrogen leaking economy
This is A Dutch presentation arguing that the concept of "life expectancy" is rather covering up the fact that mortality chance is sharp increasing after certain ages and moreover very dependent on education level and sex. If wanted I can translate the presentation to English
Responsibility of universities. Future of university social (sustainable) re...Victor Van Rij
Keynote speech for the International Conference for the Management of Educational Quality within the University Social Responsibility. 21st of September 2016, Merida, Mexico
Plea is made to use the principles of coorporate governance to lead the transformation process of Universities towards Social Responsibility that takes into account general ethical values , as well as the duty to work with and for society towards sustainability.
Who needs a teacher in the 21st century Higher Education?Victor Van Rij
Presentation to the 2014 , UNESCO, IITE conference held from 14-15 October in Moscow, New challenges for Pedagogy and Quality of Education, MOOCs, Clouds and Mobiles
21st Century Higher Education foresight 25 march 2015 [Autosaved]Victor Van Rij
The document provides an analysis of perspectives from future studies on the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICT) and higher education. It discusses several main trends, including:
1) Societal trends like increased mobility and younger generations learning differently will impact higher education.
2) Technological trends like ubiquitous internet access, massive open online courses, and augmented reality will provide new opportunities for learning.
3) Economic trends like rising youth unemployment and need for ICT skills will shape higher education systems and business models.
4) Environmental trends like addressing global challenges will require innovative thinking from higher education.
5) Policy trends around issues like privatization, enrollment goals, and digital literacy standards will influence higher education
This presentation was held for the FTA conference. It stresses the importance of "Wild card and impact rich issue" narratives as instruments that are used by individuals and groups as mean to influence future developments.
The document discusses emerging issues and wild cards as potential future shapers and how they can influence political discourse and decision making. It defines emerging issues as logically connected topics or trends that create a coherent story, and wild cards as low probability but high impact events. It examines how emerging issues and wild cards have strength as "shakers" when they have already occurred and influence discourse, and strength as "shapers" when they could potentially occur in the future. The document recommends distinguishing between naturally and human-caused emerging issues and wild cards since they require different methodological approaches, and calls for more research on how narratives influence decision makers.
Philosophy of Big Data: Big Data, the Individual, and SocietyMelanie Swan
Philosophical concepts elucidate the impact the Big Data Era (exabytes/year of scientific, governmental, corporate, personal data being created) is having on our sense of ourselves as individuals in society as information generators in constant dialogue with the pervasive information climate.
Karen Parkhill "Wacky Science or Responsible Innovation? Public Perceptions ...BUGeog
This document discusses a study on public perceptions of geoengineering and responsible innovation. The study involved interviews and workshops with publics in the UK to understand their views on geoengineering techniques, scientists' intentions, responsibility for impacts, and the role of publics. Participants generally saw scientists as working for the common good but had concerns about financial or political motivations. They believed scientists and innovators were responsible for ensuring safety and responsible development. While concerned about complexity, most felt publics should continue to be engaged in development and governance of these technologies.
Stories for survival and succes in nature and in businessVictor Van Rij
The document discusses Darwin's theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest in nature and how it can be applied to business. It argues that in a changing environment, the most fit companies are those that:
1) Have foreseeing capacity to understand trends and future impacts.
2) Have flexible structures and reserve resources to make required changes.
3) Can shape their own future environment through new technologies and persuasive future narratives.
The key to survival and success is foreseeing capacity, flexibility and resilience to change, and ability to shape one's own future. Monitoring imaginary future scenarios or "wild cards" can help businesses prepare for potential impacts. Creating positive wild card narratives can also influence stakeholders.
The document discusses various topics related to futuring and innovation including:
- Defining what a futurist is and examples of early futurists like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.
- Techniques for forecasting the future like the Delphi method, scenario writing, and analyzing forces of change.
- Examples of past predictions and technological innovations that came to fruition as well as those that did not.
- The impact of emerging technologies and social media in enabling new forms of communication, collaboration, and sharing of information in real-time across the world.
International workshop on semantic sensor web 2011ITACA-TSB
This document discusses enabling semantic ecosystems among heterogeneous cognitive networks. It describes cognitive networks and their potential to operate at large scales to solve problems across various domains. However, current approaches have limitations like a lack of social perspectives, static coverage models, and obsolete views of resources. Semantic technologies can help address these issues by improving interoperability and enabling knowledge building and representation across distributed systems. This allows for relating heterogeneous data from different sources as part of a unified knowledge ecosystem.
The presentation "Porfolios for system transformation" by Giulio Quaggiotto (Head of Strategic Innovation, UNDP) was held at Sitra's event Innovaatioportfolioryhmän luokkakokous on 5th of May, 2021.
1) The document discusses the limitations of rationalist, linear models for understanding complex systems like infrastructure, ecosystems, health care and economics that have adaptive, evolving components.
2) It argues that these systems cannot be fully understood or predicted using reductionist, "exact science" approaches and notes problems that have arisen from assuming universality and transportability of models.
3) The author calls for new approaches that acknowledge complexity, uncertainty, context and local interactions, including new epistemologies, agent-based models, and engagement with moral philosophy and political economy.
Conference 6 of 8 of the Introduction to Integral Permaculture series by NodoEspiral of the Permaculture Academy.
See www.PermaCultureScience.com for other conferences and audio to this one.
Andy Stirling on Precaution To RobustnessSTEPS Centre
See STEPS co-director Andy Stirling's presentation - From Precaution to Robustness: in governance of technological vulnerability - prepared as background to discussion at the workshop on The Vulnerability of Technological Cultures: new directions in research and governance, Maastricjt, 1-3 June 2008
A comprehensive exploration of an operating next-generation organization.
Core founding assumptions
Vision & Values
Culture is key .. wirearchy as opposed to hierarchy
Practical operational aspects
Service Research, Innovation, and (Safe) Practice in the Humanity-Centered AI Era
EMAC - https://www.emac-online.org/interest-groups/emac-special-interest-groups
EMAC SIG Service Marketing - https://www.linkedin.com/company/emac-sig-service-marketing/
Service Marketing Seminar - https://sites.google.com/view/service-marketing-seminar/startseite
You Want the Future? You Can't Handle The FutureLincolnCenterASU
This document discusses several trends related to sustainability and emerging technologies that pose challenges for governance and society. These include living in the Anthropocene age where human and natural systems are deeply intertwined, and how technologies are accelerating evolutionary pressures. It also notes the ambiguity around definitions of sustainability and mismatches between degrees of freedom of managers versus global sustainability issues. The document argues that the power of emerging technologies like biotech, nanotech, and AI poses huge challenges around issues like radical life extension, changing cognitive patterns, and geoengineering, and addresses some ways to help manage technological change.
Gregory vigneaux design thinking for the end of the worldGregory Vigneaux
This presentation brings together storytelling, design thinking, and complexity as it discusses approaching the difficult challenges facing Colorado’s emergency management community. Focused on problem framing, storytelling is explored as a key step in engaging with complex issues while the audience is invited to think about the stories they are currently telling about problems and consider how they might begin to craft different ones.
This document discusses the potential of big data and open data to transform government through the use of new technologies and partnerships. It describes the CUSP partnership between universities, companies, and government agencies to leverage urban data sources like sensors and administrative records. The goals are to improve government operations and policymaking through better understanding of infrastructure, environment, and people. Privacy issues are also addressed. Instrumenting cities and communities with diverse data collection could provide insights but requires navigating these challenges.
Sesti project: Global Sustainable Energy optionsVictor Van Rij
This presentation gives the result of the emerging issues analysis of the SESTI project on the energy domain in 2010. It provides the questions around 5 of the less well known future sustainable options/risks that were discussed in the project. The topics that were addressed are still worth while to review today.
These topics were :
1. Enhancement of the photosynthetic cycle on global scale to provide all food, energy and maintain biodiversity (briefly biomimics)
2. Use of desert areas for gaining solar energy (the DESERTEC scheme)
3. Hybrid nuclear fission-fusion to speed up nuclear fusion
4. The unknown risks of going deeper and further for energy mining
5. The unknown risks of and hydrogen leaking economy
This is A Dutch presentation arguing that the concept of "life expectancy" is rather covering up the fact that mortality chance is sharp increasing after certain ages and moreover very dependent on education level and sex. If wanted I can translate the presentation to English
Responsibility of universities. Future of university social (sustainable) re...Victor Van Rij
Keynote speech for the International Conference for the Management of Educational Quality within the University Social Responsibility. 21st of September 2016, Merida, Mexico
Plea is made to use the principles of coorporate governance to lead the transformation process of Universities towards Social Responsibility that takes into account general ethical values , as well as the duty to work with and for society towards sustainability.
Who needs a teacher in the 21st century Higher Education?Victor Van Rij
Presentation to the 2014 , UNESCO, IITE conference held from 14-15 October in Moscow, New challenges for Pedagogy and Quality of Education, MOOCs, Clouds and Mobiles
21st Century Higher Education foresight 25 march 2015 [Autosaved]Victor Van Rij
The document provides an analysis of perspectives from future studies on the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICT) and higher education. It discusses several main trends, including:
1) Societal trends like increased mobility and younger generations learning differently will impact higher education.
2) Technological trends like ubiquitous internet access, massive open online courses, and augmented reality will provide new opportunities for learning.
3) Economic trends like rising youth unemployment and need for ICT skills will shape higher education systems and business models.
4) Environmental trends like addressing global challenges will require innovative thinking from higher education.
5) Policy trends around issues like privatization, enrollment goals, and digital literacy standards will influence higher education
This presentation was held for the FTA conference. It stresses the importance of "Wild card and impact rich issue" narratives as instruments that are used by individuals and groups as mean to influence future developments.
The document discusses emerging issues and wild cards as potential future shapers and how they can influence political discourse and decision making. It defines emerging issues as logically connected topics or trends that create a coherent story, and wild cards as low probability but high impact events. It examines how emerging issues and wild cards have strength as "shakers" when they have already occurred and influence discourse, and strength as "shapers" when they could potentially occur in the future. The document recommends distinguishing between naturally and human-caused emerging issues and wild cards since they require different methodological approaches, and calls for more research on how narratives influence decision makers.
Philosophy of Big Data: Big Data, the Individual, and SocietyMelanie Swan
Philosophical concepts elucidate the impact the Big Data Era (exabytes/year of scientific, governmental, corporate, personal data being created) is having on our sense of ourselves as individuals in society as information generators in constant dialogue with the pervasive information climate.
Karen Parkhill "Wacky Science or Responsible Innovation? Public Perceptions ...BUGeog
This document discusses a study on public perceptions of geoengineering and responsible innovation. The study involved interviews and workshops with publics in the UK to understand their views on geoengineering techniques, scientists' intentions, responsibility for impacts, and the role of publics. Participants generally saw scientists as working for the common good but had concerns about financial or political motivations. They believed scientists and innovators were responsible for ensuring safety and responsible development. While concerned about complexity, most felt publics should continue to be engaged in development and governance of these technologies.
Stories for survival and succes in nature and in businessVictor Van Rij
The document discusses Darwin's theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest in nature and how it can be applied to business. It argues that in a changing environment, the most fit companies are those that:
1) Have foreseeing capacity to understand trends and future impacts.
2) Have flexible structures and reserve resources to make required changes.
3) Can shape their own future environment through new technologies and persuasive future narratives.
The key to survival and success is foreseeing capacity, flexibility and resilience to change, and ability to shape one's own future. Monitoring imaginary future scenarios or "wild cards" can help businesses prepare for potential impacts. Creating positive wild card narratives can also influence stakeholders.
The document discusses various topics related to futuring and innovation including:
- Defining what a futurist is and examples of early futurists like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.
- Techniques for forecasting the future like the Delphi method, scenario writing, and analyzing forces of change.
- Examples of past predictions and technological innovations that came to fruition as well as those that did not.
- The impact of emerging technologies and social media in enabling new forms of communication, collaboration, and sharing of information in real-time across the world.
International workshop on semantic sensor web 2011ITACA-TSB
This document discusses enabling semantic ecosystems among heterogeneous cognitive networks. It describes cognitive networks and their potential to operate at large scales to solve problems across various domains. However, current approaches have limitations like a lack of social perspectives, static coverage models, and obsolete views of resources. Semantic technologies can help address these issues by improving interoperability and enabling knowledge building and representation across distributed systems. This allows for relating heterogeneous data from different sources as part of a unified knowledge ecosystem.
The presentation "Porfolios for system transformation" by Giulio Quaggiotto (Head of Strategic Innovation, UNDP) was held at Sitra's event Innovaatioportfolioryhmän luokkakokous on 5th of May, 2021.
1) The document discusses the limitations of rationalist, linear models for understanding complex systems like infrastructure, ecosystems, health care and economics that have adaptive, evolving components.
2) It argues that these systems cannot be fully understood or predicted using reductionist, "exact science" approaches and notes problems that have arisen from assuming universality and transportability of models.
3) The author calls for new approaches that acknowledge complexity, uncertainty, context and local interactions, including new epistemologies, agent-based models, and engagement with moral philosophy and political economy.
Conference 6 of 8 of the Introduction to Integral Permaculture series by NodoEspiral of the Permaculture Academy.
See www.PermaCultureScience.com for other conferences and audio to this one.
Andy Stirling on Precaution To RobustnessSTEPS Centre
See STEPS co-director Andy Stirling's presentation - From Precaution to Robustness: in governance of technological vulnerability - prepared as background to discussion at the workshop on The Vulnerability of Technological Cultures: new directions in research and governance, Maastricjt, 1-3 June 2008
A comprehensive exploration of an operating next-generation organization.
Core founding assumptions
Vision & Values
Culture is key .. wirearchy as opposed to hierarchy
Practical operational aspects
Service Research, Innovation, and (Safe) Practice in the Humanity-Centered AI Era
EMAC - https://www.emac-online.org/interest-groups/emac-special-interest-groups
EMAC SIG Service Marketing - https://www.linkedin.com/company/emac-sig-service-marketing/
Service Marketing Seminar - https://sites.google.com/view/service-marketing-seminar/startseite
You Want the Future? You Can't Handle The FutureLincolnCenterASU
This document discusses several trends related to sustainability and emerging technologies that pose challenges for governance and society. These include living in the Anthropocene age where human and natural systems are deeply intertwined, and how technologies are accelerating evolutionary pressures. It also notes the ambiguity around definitions of sustainability and mismatches between degrees of freedom of managers versus global sustainability issues. The document argues that the power of emerging technologies like biotech, nanotech, and AI poses huge challenges around issues like radical life extension, changing cognitive patterns, and geoengineering, and addresses some ways to help manage technological change.
Gregory vigneaux design thinking for the end of the worldGregory Vigneaux
This presentation brings together storytelling, design thinking, and complexity as it discusses approaching the difficult challenges facing Colorado’s emergency management community. Focused on problem framing, storytelling is explored as a key step in engaging with complex issues while the audience is invited to think about the stories they are currently telling about problems and consider how they might begin to craft different ones.
This document discusses the potential of big data and open data to transform government through the use of new technologies and partnerships. It describes the CUSP partnership between universities, companies, and government agencies to leverage urban data sources like sensors and administrative records. The goals are to improve government operations and policymaking through better understanding of infrastructure, environment, and people. Privacy issues are also addressed. Instrumenting cities and communities with diverse data collection could provide insights but requires navigating these challenges.
This document outlines several plans (Plan A1.1 through Plan D) to prevent risks that could lead to human extinction. Plan A1.1 proposes establishing an international control system through 4 steps: research, social support, international cooperation, and establishing a worldwide risk prevention authority. It also proposes developing "active shields" like geoengineering and nanotechnology to defend against threats. Plan A2 focuses on developing friendly artificial intelligence to eliminate risks. Plan A3 aims to improve civilization's resilience through technologies like immortality and miniaturization. Plan A4 involves colonizing space to distribute humanity beyond Earth. Plans B through D have lower chances of success and involve surviving potential catastrophes through preparation and rebuilding civilization.
15/3 -17 impact exponential technologies Paul Epping
This document discusses how emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, digital biology, robotics, and nanotechnology are advancing exponentially and will transform our future in unprecedented ways. It summarizes key points about how within a few decades, machines may surpass human-level intelligence, leading to a technological singularity. It also emphasizes the importance of developing these technologies in a way that aligns with human values like democracy, liberty, and compassion to ensure they are beneficial to humanity. The document provides examples of the impact technologies may have on jobs, health, and other aspects of society, as well as perspectives on how to guide technological progress responsibly.
The document discusses the knowledge economy and knowledge society. It defines the knowledge economy as one where knowledge has become the main resource and the pace of innovation is accelerating. Knowledge has different properties than traditional resources like being non-rivalrous and partially excludable. The knowledge society can be viewed through the lens of the primacy of scientific knowledge, the rise of knowledge work, or as a networked society where knowledge production and sharing are decentralized. There are implications for policies, organizations, and individuals in transitioning to a knowledge economy and society.
Similar to Victorvan Rij Wildcards Hes Moskou December2011 (20)
Sesti workshop-cognitive enhancement futuresVictor Van Rij
This document summarizes a workshop on cognitive enhancement that discussed: the hopes and fears around future human evolution with cognitive enhancement; levels of enhancement from temporary aids to enhancing basic abilities; main motives for cognitive enhancement including individual and societal benefits; and main pathways for enhancement including social/psychological, biological, and tools. It analyzed weak signals around the progress of developments in pathways, identifying emerging ethical issues especially around neuro-reading, implants, enhancement drugs, genetic screening and IVF, and commercial interests.
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This document discusses horizon scanning and foresight activities in the Netherlands to influence research and development priorities. It provides an overview of the Dutch government's spending on research and development, which totals 3-4 billion euros annually. It also outlines the Netherlands' use of foresight studies to identify emerging topics and align actors around themes to inform priority setting and new R&D programming. More recently, the Netherlands has adopted horizon scanning as a wider scoping foresight approach to better identify complex interactions and new issues across disciplines. The document concludes by explaining horizon scanning methodology used in the Netherlands.
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The document discusses a project funded by the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities program. It describes the different work packages in the project including emerging issues detection, priority setting and clustering, analysis of early warning signals, and deeper analysis of potential emerging issues. It poses questions about relating scanning activities to policies, priority setting procedures, the role of early warning signals, methods for further analysis, and the potential role of automation and text mining in horizon scanning procedures.
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1. Use of Horizon scanning and wild cards in Foresight
International workshop December 9th 2011
Methodology and practice of foresight studies
Higher School of Economics – National Research university
Moscow
Victor van Rij
Netherlands Council for Science and Technology
2. This presentation
• Knowledge about the future: the use of “Forward looking” activities in
public policy
• Scanning of future horizons
• The use of the wild card concept
4. Knowledge about the future
• Engineering tradition (natural science approach, using laws of nature) – mega constructions –
predictable systems
• Planning tradition (from statistics to modelling) economic modelling, climate modelling –
predictable if we know the variables
• Military tradition (monitoring, scouting, spying - scenario’s, gaming) – warfare - eyes and ears
wide open and rehearse all kind of eventualities
• Social science traditions (learn from history, participation, measuring desirability, influencing
behaviour)
5. Knowledge about the future
for the government
• Forecasting, future advice based on engineering - planning – military tradition (trying to describe
and give options - usually not creative)
Usually accepted & embedded
Scientific advice -Planning agencies – Statistical bureau’s
• Foresight (adding social sciences– role of actors with (opposite) desires – participatory approaches
– adding the creative aspect)
Accepted in many places & sometimes temporarily embedded (in policy domains)
S&T foresight in UK, France, Netherlands in the nineties, Now Foresight & Strategic Units,
Independent bodies, Finnish commission for the future etc
• Horizon scanning (mixing the traditions – integrative approach – complexity – adding resilience in
complexity – creative )
Accepted in some places UK, Singapore, Netherlands, Denmark, sometimes embedded Singapore
and Horizon-scanning centre in the UK
7. Horizon scanning
Horizon scanning is an instrument to shape the future to (common) desires,
needs after participative thinking and debating
Horizon scanning
Systematic Search for Issues with Potential high (Future) Impact on what we
consider to be important
Issues are statements/stories about the future, based on outcomes of
research, trend analysis, scenario studies, weak or faint signal analysis but
also on human imagination
Issues are therefore based on a mix of scientific knowledge and tacit
knowledge including our imagination
7
8. Opportunities/solutions : Threats/problems from:
Human action/brainpower Human action/environment
Science & Technology With expected Science, technology
Education
large impact on
Education
Social system society:
Social system
Political, Government, legal, COMMON Political, Government, legal
economy, finance Economy, finance
LONG TERM
Other Systems Systems (infrastructures,
(infrastructures, production, DESIRES production, transport, ICT,
transport, ICT, energy, energy, industry, health care,
industry, healthcare, agriculture)
agriculture) & VALUES
Physical environment Human: Physical environment
Survival , Health
Natural resources from Shortage/destruction/
Welfare, wealth
(Outer) Space, Sun Wellbeing (Outer) Space
Space Democracy, law Space
Self-realization
Sea and waters Sea and waters
Culture, ethics
Earth and soil Earth and soil
And Ecology,
Atmosphere Climate Ecosystem Atmosphere climate
Living world Biodiversity Living world
11. Definition and criteria emerging issue
Emerging issues are storylines (Future Narratives) with:
• High impact (on our values, society, economy, ecology or activity)
• Plausible storyline (including factual basis –reliable sources )
• Novelty (is the issue described really new for the policy makers)
• Changeability (Can the story or its impact be altered by human action)
• Policy relevance (does the issue relate to present day decision making
and action and on different levels)
• Emotional aspects and critical aspects (does the issue appeal or concern
emotional and or ethical legal aspects)
• Interests at stake (commonalities and or conflicts)
11
12. Issue dimensions
IMPACT : Issues that may have great or less great impact on what
we see as important (seize of impact)
PROBABILITY & PLAUSIBILITY : Issues that are certain or less certain
but still plausible (probability and plausibility)
DESIRABILITY : Issues that are desirable or not desirable for society
(desirability, common or opposed values)
CHANGEABILITY : Issues that are not changeable or changeable by
human action (changeability)
TIME : moment of observation , interaction, dynamics
12
13. + Issues with Potential high Impact on what we consider to be important
The Internet
Ageing society
Climate Change
certainty
NBIC convergence
desirability
Migration
Nuclear War changeability
13
14. Sources and tools for scanning
Non participative / (digital) written sources
• Systematic manual scanning (internet –search engines)
• Literature study
• Text mining
Participative / stakeholders & experts
• Survey
• Wiki
• Blogs/linked In /and others like Facebook
• Twitter
• Workhops etc
14
15. Systematic Internet scanning
• Internet Search on internet using search engines provided by :
google / bing
• Google selects all pages (texts & vids) with the “search string”
• sorts the pages that are most connected/central
Needed
• Qualified scanners (fast interpretation)
• Frame of reference (coordinates/for which domain does the
scan take place/criteria)
• Intelligent questions
• Workhops
15
16. The principles of Issue / Wild card Centered Scanning
= Primary signal (full or partial future issue description)
= Affirmative Secondary signal
= Not affirmative Secondary signal
= Expected affirmative signal not showing up
= Analysis of Primary signal (leading to indication of
Secondary signals to watch for)
B Emerging issue B
Past Present Future
17. The principles of Issue / Wild card Centered Scanning
= Primary signal (full or partial future issue or wild card
description)
= Affirmative Secondary signal
= Not affirmative Secondary signal
= Expected affirmative signal not showing up
= Analysis of Primary signal (leading to indication of
Secondary signals to watch for)
B Emerging issue B
WC
C
Past Present Future
19. wild cards
• An event or serie (cascade) of events (with seemingly low
probability?) that changes the settings of our world completely
(causing high impact shocks/disruptions)
• Which we hardly see or we do not want to see
• Earth quakes of the mental landscape (Karlheinz Steinmuller), black
swans (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
• Once every 2 to 3 years we have a world wide wild card which
moves the world
• examples – War in Iracq – 9/11 - financial crisis – Iceland volcano
and deep sea oil leak
20. 2
0
Types of wild cards
• That have happened
• That may happen : Imagined (by author ------------ by imagination
process)or search for potential wild cards (i-Know, Far horizon)
___________________________________
• Nature caused (volcano, earthquake etc)
• Human caused (non intentionally, industrial accident, panic in the crowd ,
berlin wall , intentionally, terrorist attack)
2/8/2012 SESTI Emerging Issues 20
21. 2
1
Types of wild cards
• Tension building - almost invisible trends or sequence of events (Arab
spring, suppose: long term effect of UMTS causes infertility)
• Sudden (un)expected events with a known very low or unknown
probability but which we know will happen on basis of historical Evidence
(large earthquakes, breakthrough medicine), where when and how????
• Sudden unexpected events wich may never occur but can be imagined and
which if they happen have an unavoidable character (aliens landing)
• The unimaginable (the real black swan?) ??????
2/8/2012 SESTI Emerging Issues 21
22. 2
2
Imaginary wild cards
• Narratives with Facts , Impacts, Novelty, Plausibility, interests, desires
(wish , fear , ideal, lobby cards)
• Instruments to shape or shake future to desire/ideal/interests of card
initiator, sometimes deliberately opposite to desire (evoking fear)
• Strength of a card not only facts> Assessment should look at , facts ,
logics, but also who is initiating the signals, what are the interests and
values that are at stake, who is relaying, supporting, who is blocking or
opposing, what is the message doing with emotions of the receivers etc
-------------------------------------------------
• (SESTI) Searching Published Imaginary Wild cards (initiators action) or
(Far Horizon, i-Know) Wild cards creating on demand
2/8/2012 SESTI Emerging Issues 22
23. The use of imaginary wild cards
• Alerting on disasters and opportunities to adjust policies to prevent, adapt
or countervail bad cards and optimise harvesting of the good ones, search
for signals can we predict?
• Instrument to test robustness of strategies and plan (enhance resilience),
what may disrrupt our business?
• Creative or inspiring tool opening up new surprising options what may
help us to conquer the world?
• Instruments to shape or shake future to desire/ideal/interests of card
initiator, sometimes deliberately opposite to desire (evoking fear) search
who is doing this fro what reason?
23
24. 2
4
SESTI – Alert-Early warning signals
• Primary signal : someone pushes or asks for attention by placing
(scientific) article(s) or video’s with more or less full description of a wild
cards (large breakthrough, opportunity, threat, sniping dangerous trends
usually with large impact and even policy suggestions)
• Secundary signals: opposing or confirming (scientific) articles , reactions,
discussion with arguments and links (blogs),
2/8/2012 SESTI Emerging Issues 24
25. SESTI Thinking model
TREND
Sea of Signals
Emerging issue A
Hype issue C Emerging issue F
WC Hype issue D
WC
Emerging issue B
Emerging issue E
Emerging issue G
Past Present Future 25
26. Where to look (systematically)
NATURAL CAUSES ENVIRONMENT
• Earth, land (volcano’s, landslides, gas eruption, mud volcano’s,earth quakes)
• Air (climate change, dust, tornado, storms)
• Water (draught, floods , pollution natural causes)
• Biosphere (epidemics, plagues, zoo-noses, mass-starvation, infertility etc)
• Outer space (asteroids, extraterrestrial live, no or sudden solar activity)
HUMAN CAUSES SOCIETY/VALUES TECHNOLOGY and SCIENCE
ECONOMY POLITICS/PUBLIC SERVICES
• Society (Value shifts, movements , hypes social trends, demography,social conflict)
• Technology and Science (breakthrough’s, new technologies etc)
• Economy (crisis, prosperous developments etc)
• Politics/Public services (everything that can go wrong and right, warfare)
27. Example 1 missed alert cards
News on public risks subprime loans sample on News google timeline
100
90
80
70
Number of articles in sample
60
percentage not paying back
(subprime/alt a)
articles
50
Amount loaned subprime and
alt-a (x100 million US dollars)
40
30
20
10
0
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
years/quarters
Financial crisis
2007-2008
28. Example 2 alert card: Very cheap and abundant
“clean” energy
Rossi's 1 MW Cold Fusion E-Cat Reac
Test on 28th of October 2011
28
29. Low temperature Nuclear Fusion without radiation
• Recent developments indicate that clean “nuclear fusion” will be available
within the coming decade without the special and expensive requirements
that were foreseen in the Nuclear fusion Inertial confinement and plasma
fusion projects (like ITER and NIF) that still need 40 to 50 years before any
application.
• After the scientific community felt over the announcement of Fleischman and
Pons that they had discovered a simple way to create cold fusion, no one
considered to put his career at stake by retrying the experiments that many
already tried before in vain
• The contradiction of “low temperature induced” nuclear fusion with many
basic findings of nuclear physics and the bad reproducibility of the
experiments, caused an almost complete “forbidden”area of science.
• Still some groups went on , amongst them the SPAWAR lab and later on other,
gradually creating more reproducible “anomalous” results, leading to a strong
interest of US military in 2006 and renewed attention of NASA in 2009 and
finally the claim of an Italian that he can create energy form hydrogen and
nickel in 2010
30. Signals
• P1. In 2004 cold fusion was mentioned in the Dutch horizon scan (continuous
stream of underground results with anomalous heat – SPAWAR reports(2002)
• S1.Increasing number of a variety of experiments in different countries (with
other cathodes, gas in stead of liquid environment, anomalous heat but also
transmutation of elements, Iwamuri , Mitsubishu) – hiding under LNER, CANR
• S2.American chemical society and American Physical society start to put cold
fusion results on the agenda of their regular worskhops
• S3.+8 Interest of the Military in US (nov 2009 Defence Analysis Report, 12 dec
2006 DTRA workshop)
• S4. Japanese public demonstration of excess heat electrolytic device
• S5.Italian nickel-hydrogen gas device, Focardi/Piantelli claims high repeatable
anomalous heat output (2005) , test CERN (unclear outcome), test NASA
(confirms anomalous heat)
• P 2 2010 Josephson (former Nobel prize winner) and Bushnell (science
director) at NASA speak out the expectation that cold fusion will
revolutionizethe energy domain
• Both seeing theory of Widom and Larsen as hypotheses that may fit within the
slowly evolving nuclear physics paradigm
• S7. Rossi claims his 1 megawatt test after public demonstrations of 4 – 12 kilo
watt devices (based on Focardi device)
31. Impact
• Nuclear fission and fusion require far less material than the burning
of fossil-fuel approximately 370 gram of fissioned Uranium equals
1200 Ton of Charcoal, which equals the nuclear fusion of 100 gram
deuterium and tritium.
• As known nuclear fission needs an outstanding High technological
performance as well as a much demanding safety and security.
Ignition of a controlled nuclear fusion process requires not only very
high temperatures but also very sophisticated methods to stabilise the
process. Nuclear waste, accidents and proliferation of nuclear arms
are known disadvantages of the nuclear fission pathway to resolve the
energy problems of the world.
• Rossi claims to control a nuclear fusion process (of Nickel and
hydrogen creating Copper) that is much more simple to initiate than
“hot”’fusion like ITER and NIFF (with realtive low temperature) – in
which 1 kg of nickel and 17 gram of hydrogen produce 1 megawatt
heat a year , which is tranformed into steam.
32. IMPACT ,hard to believe(2)
• Small and large units (back to steam engines) , steam output is usefull
for heating, kinetic energy and electricity production , water may be a
limiting problem for small mobile applications
• Unbelief will stay for a while
• Enormous shift in energy global production, total disruption, but much
quicker to CO2 reduction .Threat to projects as ITER, but also for
renewable developers and investors as well as fossil energy investors
• Shifts in power of energy producers (companies , countries)
• Many new questions for Physics (can the paradigm hold)
• Conflicts on patents
• Search for safety and environmental risk
33. Example 3 Inspiring card: Rebalancing the greenhouse-
by re-greening earth & enhancing the carbon cycle
• WW policy Expanding and enhance the green space for energy, food,
carbon products and sequestration
• Using desert land to catch the sun through irrigation (in DESERTEC like
arrangements or by salt water use(tallophytes or cyanobacteria) or even
artificial vegetation (start with PV heath solar end with biomass increase)
• Improve the efficiency of total photo synthetic production of natual
vegetation , forest and agricultural areas (by ecomanagement, crop
selection , biotechnology - C4 plants)
• Further future : development of artificial photosynthesis to sequestrate
Carbon and to produce fuel
38. Re-greened earth – 10 Giga Ton extra will do
2/8/2012 SESTI Emerging Issues 38
39. The signals
• p1. Biomimics articles , the ideal solar cells transforms sunlight into fuel, based
on imitation of biological systems
• p2. Desertec using desertland (in North Africa) to create electricity through solar
powerplants – creating agricultural conditions and exporting electricity with
High Voltage DC technique to Europe at the same time
• s3. Articles on Artificial photosynthesis to sequestrate and to make fuel
• s4. Articles on biotech improving photosynthetic efficiency in crops and
efficienvy competition of plants and PV cells
• s5. NASA brainstorm (use tallophyta and salt water cyanobacteria culture on
land to prodcuce energy)
• S6. US-Forestry techniques to sequestrate more carbon/Germany wooden mills
40. Impacts
• Almost no need for materials that may be scarce or polluting
• Nearly sustainable, local and central energy provisions possible
gradual sequestration of atmospheric overdose of CO2
• Land use (countries have different expanding possibilities),
agricultural and forestry policy (is also about energy) , carbon pricing
• Fuel versus electricity (competition or cohesion between “bio” and
other “tech”) – artificial still long time to go
• Possible loss of Biodiversity (Desert land species )
• Nutrient cycle stress, earth radiance balance
41. Increase of photosynthesis
other aspects
• Concentrated inter disciplinary research needed to increase
photosynthetic activity in existing eco-agricultural production and in
non productive areas (deserts)
• Spatial planning focus on food an energy
• Research to sequestration balances
• Need for thought on type of fuel (ethanol, hydrogen?), planning of land
use
• Line of thought to produce energy with CO2 sequestrated material
deserves more attention (wooden mills)