WIWES contributed by Ivan Montenegro Perini
Considering the whole of Yellowstone (US National Park) is basically a dormant volcano, can you imagine the chaos that would resign if this became active? There could, and probably would, be catastrophic impacts on society, eco...
A magnetic solar storm hits the earth and therefore the elec ...
As a technology dependent society, if a major magnetic solar storm was to hit the earth, there would be lasting damage to electric power grids and potentially the electricity supply of the world could be severely damaged. If a ...
Defragmentation within the European Commission
We will have more strong national countries within Europe and less power from the Commission, which would have many impacts on the European Research Area, innovation policy etc. We will have a Europe at two speeds – some coun...
Researchers do not take responsibility for results
It is always the industry or the academic who adopted the idea. This could change generally, and there could be more regulation of the researchers.
Catastrophe related to technology
e.g. a nuclear power plant meltdown. Something could happen, because people and societies always think they can control technology. After such a catastrophe there will be some kind of rethink about basic technology and progress...
Today, services in logistics are strongly characterized by a high importance placed on the time aspect. Current economic processes demand “just-in-time” delivery of the right goods in the right place, both in business-to-co...
According to him: "I can imagine that there are increasing tendencies towards a turning back of current globalization patterns, particularly regarding global trade volumes. In this wild card scenario, a growing share of consume...
All the information about almost everything became available ...
This would change politics, economy, finance, technology, etc. Possibly in the end it would be a positive move, although many people would lose in the short term. It would be very wild, because it would change the way everythin...
The internet collapses and cannot be restarted
The internet is the nervous system of the global economy, so if it goes down we have a really big problem.
The collapse of a major nation in a geopolitical area that i ...
So Pakistan, Iran or Russia. Each of these major nations with large populations is already under huge pressure from internal dissent, terrorist groups, breakaway groups and financial pressure, etc. We can imagine dramatic possi...
Climate change, rapid changes, our current models
Low probability events often appear to be extremely likely, because they keep happening. So, for example, a large part of the Arctic ice breaks off and sea levels rise, maybe there is a drought and a severe heatwave that jeopar...
The problem of people’s mental wellbeing and mental health
In previous centuries, people’s mental framework was kept in place by the class system, the dominant ideology and particularly by religion. Everybody went to church on Sunday and the church organised differences between peopl...
Social technology as the catalyst that helped all the stakeh ...
A sudden step change in the intelligence of a city – and intelligence is not just about information, it is about thinking the information is necessary. This would have big impacts. Suddenly we see the possibility for cities t...
The emergence of research nationally
Which is something that has happened because of the crisis. People are now defending their own turf and trying to maximize their own research – no longer a European approach but a national approach. It is going back to the wr...
Get a unified European defence
That might generate the European defence research policy, which would have a huge impact on whatever we do. It is comparable to the impact of the UN. That is in a sense a positive wild card.
