Weak Signals contributed by Ivan Montenegro Perini
Particularly, strange are the sun spots (dark patches) as spotted by Galileo. They normally occur in an 11 year cycle, but they have been at a minimum recently as no sun spots have been observed for over 2 ½ years and this is ...
According to Luke GEORGHIOU: "There are some small signs, e.g. Paganism is one of the fastest growing religions. It has been officially recognised and the police are entitled to leave on Pagan festivals if they state that it is...
Misunderstanding of foresight studies.
Policy makers at the European level will read some of these wild cards, but probably for many of them there will be no response, action or preparation for some of these futures, because they think that is too far away, or not r...
More important for futurists is to understand what the decis ...
According to Karl Heinz LEITNER: "Future researchers are not so interested in this question, because they want to provoke and create. But I think the community should better understand what happens with this information."
A growing number of people want to live more consciously, an ...
This is partly due to the ever-increasing requirements for accuracy and work pace in all kinds of professions and other areas of daily life. These increased stress factors are also responsible for the continuously growing share...
The share of German small and medium-sized companies that re ...
These companies are now discovering Germany as their main production location.
A growing demand for mobility services.
An increased share of people prefer to rent, rather than own, mobility devices, or are increasingly using public transport. This development shows the increased awareness of environmental problems and aspects of sustainability,...
Most of PHD students think European
They think in terms not of fortress Europe, but in terms of doing a PhD in Finland but part of it in Barcelona and then getting an appointment in Britain. So there is an increasing consensus that that is the road to research an...
Each European country for itself does not mean anything.
There is a growing idea that we must act more together. There is also the realisation that if we want to be a global player we need a common foreign and defence policy. I think these might make it possible. With the research n...
Cyber attack could take on an economy by hitting a weak point over and over again. The US economy was almost taken down by the banking situation two years ago and there is evidence there was some malevolent cyber hacking and ba...
Bacteria; it is actually a strong one
We have people trying to make synthetic bacteria for energy conversion technology, such as converting coal into methane. That kind of technology, linked with other technology in IT, such as multi core processors – if you foll...
The environmental fiasco caused by scientists changing their ...
Many traditional techniques are clearly failing and many techniques used by politicians over the last few decades have made things much worse. There is a lot of frustration building up, people are wary of politicians and I thin...
According to Ian PEARSON: "At the moment there are some big ...
According to Ian PEARSON: "At the moment we are doing small incremental changes leading to a slow development path and it needs a rapid change. Weak signals of that are just the numbers of people looking at the field."
China already controls approximately 80% of essential earth ...
With regard to the Far East limiting access to rare materials that are vital to renewable technology, there are already studies saying China controls approximately 80% of these resources and as such there are concerns over futu...
Debate about climate change, carbon emissions and CO2 emissi ...
There is ongoing debate about climate change, carbon emissions and CO2 emissions. Typically, this is along the lines of climate scientists versus industry regarding the validity of CO2 emissions and the correlation to global wa...
