WIWES contributed by Ivan Montenegro Perini
According to Nature (2012), "the largest submerged caldera in the world, Santorini last erupted in 1950 and had been relatively quiet until early 2011, when small earthquakes started to rattle the islands. The region remained f...
R&D in synthetic biofuels from algae.
There is currently much venture capital flowing into this research area, particularly the breeding and treatment of different algae types. Additionally, the famous biochemist Craig Venter is active in financing projects aimed a...
All goods and services produced or consumed by people can be ...
The growing use of technologies in production is a significant trend, along with the related structural unemployment of a considerable part of the workforce. This can result in a wild card which could be characterised as a turn...
A version of GM wheat starts producing a chemical which alte ...
This is possible, as common food products have important effects on health and wellbeing, so a major proportion of the population could be affected
Combine climate change with animal-borne diseases, and the l ...
there are the makings of a perfect storm. Certain conditions could come together to cause a major health epidemic or something that affects a significant sector of the agricultural business, or agricultural dependency, e.g. a w...
A major dip in the supply of UK human resources in science a ...
That would have significant impact on industry, which would exacerbate the effects that are already being picked up
Certain areas in research are no longer funded
If something arises which is currently low key, not particularly sexy in the research sense, then you begin to have a backlog, as you lack the research to deal with the threat when it arises. It is a wildcard that has already c...
Destabilization of the innovation system
Go back to the destabilization of the economy and losing funding. Society and the economy destabilize the innovation system. In Greece, for example, I imagine many Greek researchers will no longer look for research jobs in Gr...
As an extreme, imagine if domestic dogs suddenly became a carrier for some flea-borne disease which affected humans in the UK. It would be a major issue. It is the equivalent of the Black Death, but instead of rats coming into ...
Wheat does not grow any more, it is where wheat or another f ...
A good example is the Chorley Wood process. Bread made in the old way used to take four or five hours, but through the addition of flour improvers and enzymes, bread can be produced in a few minutes. But now there is an upsurge...
Somewhere in the next 50 years we will find a much better wa ...
We will move into a much faster, more durable substrate and will do amazing things and go to amazing places. If you then ask yourself, if the ultimate quality of awareness is the same between you and me and my dog and the thing...
The seabed is lined with methane hydrate, and if you take th ...
We know in the past there have been great belches of methane, followed by a climate spike. The American coastline has had a lot of extra erosion because of extra agricultural production and there could be a landslide. This woul...
Chinese society collapsing under its own weight.
The only thing holding China together is the People’s Republican Party and habit. China could go down and take a lot of debts and make the current financial crisis look like nothing.
Somebody cracks RSA, which is a standard inscription
If this was done in a public domain way, the entire banking system and ATMs would stop working and could not be used, as they would be insecure. The whole thing is based on one inscription algorithm.
One the European Union should strongly consider is that glob ...
By that I mean everything has an absorption curve. Imagine you have a clear glass of water and you put in a drop of ink and it becomes darker, and you keep doing that until it is completely black and then adding more in does no...
The breakdown of European health systems, and, consequently, ...
The breakdown of European health systems, and, consequently, an abrupt and revolutionary change in these systems. This would be quite negative for the broad masses
Water shortages and flooding as well as temperature rises an ...
Water shortages and flooding as well as temperature rises and droughts due to climate change would affect population movement in Europe and elsewhere. Areas for wine growing and other crops may begin to move to other countries ...
Government cut backs driving innovation but possibly affecti ...
This could stimulate innovation and new social capital and community based business but in certain countries worst affected, cuts will undermine social cohesion, healthcare, education and public order. Change needs to be manage...
This could include events like Oil spills, major earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, nuclear events, forest fires or pandemics. These would have differing effects from serious flooding of coastal cities and seaboards due...
Population increase and migration to cities and effect on fo ...
Population increase and migration to cities and effect on food production and distribution. This could be addressed by looking at the over reliance on a few outlets and resilience plans could be devised.
Significant Demographic change , people living longer , chan ...
If demographic change created overwhelming demand on healthcare through an ageing population, more home based personalised care, higher hospital admissions, increased levels of Dementia, and dramatic resource implications of tr...
Major lack of sustainability in energy sources and irreparab ...
Climate change particularly linked to man-made causes and increased CO2 will involve more risky exploration for fossil fuels and irreparable damage to wildlife habitats, shrinkage in polar caps, sea level rises. This could be a...
Acid release of methane from plants on the ocean floor
Even rapid release of methane from melting tundra is likely to be of great concern (see alarm posted by Hans Schellnberger of the Potsdam Institute in my review of Clive Hamilton, Requium for a Species, chosen as a recent Bo...
Pandemic causing significant deaths in G20
There would not only be a huge financial and societal impact but also a “backlash” against science’s failure to prevent the deaths. There could be an initial boost in vaccines and immunology research, but then the researc...
Perhaps this is more of a stereotypical Wild Card, but it would surely boost interest and investment in science. By this I am not alluding to aliens landing here, but some evidence of intelligent signals from deep space for ins...
Significant’ financial events cause ‘significant’ chan ...
For instance China calling in debts to undermine a G20 economy leading to significant financial difficulties in Europe and social unrest. There will be an initial significant decrease in science activity, coupled with societal ...
Significant terrorist action damaging science infrastructure
For example London, Cambridge, Manchester put out of action for a significant period of time (more than 1 year). With a damaged infrastructure in the UK (or Europe) the loss of research capacity could divert investment to other...
The development of a medical cure for cancer
This wild card would have significant impacts, not only on health and wellbeing, but also on the economy, in particular on the pharmaceutical industry and companies developing cancer drugs. If this wild card occurred, it would ...
The occurrence of a devastating environmental catastrophe in ...
as just happened in the Gulf of Mexico. If such a disaster happened on our shores, this would have dramatic impacts on European societies and economics. A catastrophe similar to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill would even be more d...
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.
Digital blow-up, a major cyber meltdown, massive identify th ...
It would make people less willing to trust in cyber communications and commerce and weakened the Union in that critical economic dimension.
Such as a dirty bomb, would be a big challenge and be both a wild card and a major reorder of the equilibrium. It is such an undesirable thing, no one wants to face the prospect. Europe has never had an active bomb or dirty bo...
Breakthrough in Monastery Medicine
According to Dr. Johannes MAYER: "You could further consider an extension and call it “Breakthrough in Traditional European Medicine (TEM)”, as the usage of European (and Asian) medical plants in Europe goes back 2000 years...
It is a massive shift in the profile of the population – both age and origin – away from traditional patterns. It could be in any number of directions, but render traditional European populations minorities. That would caus...
A schism of Europe between one part and another
In the past we have had North/South East/West, an iron curtain. Another schism of a different type may be a digital have/have not, an environmental have/have not, maybe some portable cleavage causing a schism. So you may not ha...
We will be able to build processors using bacteria
We will be able to make ‘smart’ yoghurt, where every bacterium in the yoghurt will have electronic devices which it assembles in its own cells linked together to create skilled intelligence. So a pot of ‘smart’ yoghurt ...
A major disaster caused by an R&D accident
it is more likely in the biotech field. For example a virus or bacteria created in a laboratory is released by terrorists, and causes chaos
Whenever there is a major health outbreak, then people quick ...
That increases the chance of more dietary shift. Methane emission by cows, and the fact that the meat industry is one of the biggest problems for climate change, could be an impetus. Meditation, as health costs are so high and ...
The technology progresses, that does not necessarily mean th ...
You could watch the natural miniaturization of electronic devices and track that to see how far that goes and how smart these things become. There is a lot of talk about web standards and the semantic web. The difficulty tracki...
Enabling more fluctuating sources of electricity.
On the material plenty side, you could be looking at energy trading, electricity trading. You could watch the fraction of renewable energy used in Europe, the transnational trading of these things and the consolidation of regio...
Euro became fiat money and not debt money.
Talk about fiat money; and places that are strong, but so challenged economically that they need to make a fundamental change in their economic system or be totally owned by the hedge funds. We think that is far more likely. If...
Some people has insisted on cycling everywhere and using pub ...
It is almost an ideology for him. You can probably find scores of examples of people making small shifts because they think it is appropriate, rather than waiting for the big shift to happen.
Cultivating the values that lead people to work within natur ...
It is a way of approaching small-scale farming that works within the capacity of the land to maintain fertility. It is not just pragmatic, it is more about cultivating the values that lead people to work within natural boundari...
The shift towards post-material values
Going from the need to own a lot of stuff to feel good, to modes of satisfaction and fulfilment that are not based on possessions, but maybe on quality of relationships or doing the right thing by the environment. Where It stop...
The current economic crisis and the lowbrow behaviour of pow ...
The driver of this development is the significant shift of the liberalised system of values in Eastern Europe towards the only critical criterion, economic gain.
Major changes in the behaviour of ecosystems could be caused by the surface water warming by a few degrees. That could also cause an enormous burden for the power grid because water is used to cool practically the whole industr...
Less than half of UK engineering and physical science gradua ...
There are many students deferring university entry because there is perceived higher competition for university entrants places. A knock-on effect could be a sudden downturn in UK student intake, leading to a dip in terms of sk...
Scientists produced artificial lungs for mice for the first ...
Normally, after having successfully achieved tests and experiments on mice it takes around 10 to 15 years before the same results or methods can be applied to humans.
Developing an individually fitting pharmaceutical against ca ...
Particularly in biotech it is observable that current research actions aim at the development of respective technologies. These actions hint at a probable breakthrough in this field, but not within the next ten years.
Too few transnational actions concerning the regulation of f ...
Already we can observe that banks are again distributing high bonus payments to their managers, that profits of banks, which had to be supported by the governments, are increasing and that there is a reintroduction of the “ca...
The way society perceives technological advances or other cr ...
There seems to be a general public misunderstanding of science. The way society perceives technological advances or other crises can dramatically influence their opinion and acceptance of such technologies. This has been eviden...
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...
An ambition for the energy industry is to create low cost re ...
There is a lot of research ongoing to establish this, which is itself a weak signal that we are aspiring to create this holy grail of low cost sustainable energy.
The bee population is massively in decline.
One of the reasons for this could be the changes in climate which is significantly changing the ecological system and the natural habitat. However, that is if there is such a thing as climate change!
A very serious reduction in support of research and developm ...
You could get a situation where this would not be merely discouraged but forbidden. Most cannot conceive of a serious setback like that but it is possible, particularly when you see more and more discontent with the way things...
According to Harold A. Linstone: "We see it already in the USA you have efforts in Texas, for example, where the school boards are forcing the schools to use texts that include intelligent design as an alternative to evolution....
There is a strange echo of the early industrial age from 200 ...
According to Fred Young Philips: "There was a report I read that compared the per capita GDP of countries to a host of variables and it turns out and I am quoting here from my paper, ‘a 24/7 Wall Street Report based on IMF da...
Changes in scientific journals – there is a focus and an i ...
Everyone is talking about biotechnologies nowadays, which is a good indication that there is potential there. People cannot imagine what can be done really. If you talk to people who work in this area, it is clearly very new an...
GlaxoSmithKline is trying to benefit from medical knowledge ...
According to Johannes Mayer: "Further, there has been an enormous increase in external requests at our research group lately. Another important signal might be a research group in Austria, which focuses on exploring a kind of t...
What happens if governments try to violate our human rights ...
which is happening a little in Italy. There is also a risk of this happening in The Netherlands, where a right wing party got a lot of votes in the last election. If they were in power, this could affect not so much citizens’...
The difficulty that have in The Netherlands to form a govern ...
This has almost become impossible, and at every new election it becomes more and more difficult to make a new cabinet.
There are certain occurrences on the internet, and certain w ...
More and more of the immediate landscape is becoming itemized, individualized and influenced by many more people. Twitter is a good example. In DATE???? a little more than one year ago I wrote an article for a Dutch newspaper...
The developing countries are not developing and that China i ...
As we move into a world of more sparsity, these decisions by the Chinese government, the Chinese people and Chinese companies to buy basic materials from Africa are a clear weak signal of the crucial position of Africa in a wor...
At a certain moment people no longer accept political power
An example would be the Euro. Already some financial experts and economists have predicted or suggested the disentanglement of the Eurozone, with one for Northern Europe and one for Southern Europe. That would be a specific wil...
Seismicity in Europe – a major earthquake
Parts in Europe where Seismicity is not very well known, for example N-Europe – Britain. There are places though with some seismicity – to date smaller earthquakes have not done anything. However, were these to hit sensit...
For example the first European Hurricane. – We had a tropical storm in Portugal in 2008 for example. There is an interesting project looking at this – the Katrina project – it has nothing to do with America but is modell...
Science, technology and innovation will be directed towards ...
We end poverty as we know it and it is more complex than that because there is poverty of mind and poverty of spirit and poverty of physical things and this could end poverty of physical/material things over 20 years if we focu...
Personalised nutrition and personalised medicine for all
It could be important and there are some limits on that and poverty is one of the major limits, so the issue is if we can deal with that and poverty we can make some of the other revolutions more effective.
UK media was controlled by Russians, or operators from other ...
If a sensitive election is coming up, certain issues can be distorted for many reasons. In the UK, the media, particularly newspapers and television, have a very strong influence on attitudes in society, and those involved in t...
There is a difference between the reality of an issue and th ...
The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) was once recognised as being completely independent, but now it is also prone to sensationalise events, and cannot be considered as a reliable source of information. Indeed, traditiona...
Fishing Blockades to prevent offloading thousands of fish to ...
Blockades have been made at Peterhead port in Aberdeenshire, physically preventing the Faroese vessel Jupiter from offloading 1,100 tonnes of the fish to a processing plant in protest at the quotas for mackerel fishing.
One of the interesting things about this is it made possible by some of the same tools that make outsourcing and democratization of innovation work. The fact that you are a billionaire but you are using many of the fundamental...
People do not care about their health
People do not care about their health because they will have a nano-lab inside their bodies.
University offers Lady Gaga sociology course
As reported by BBC, a new course on "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame" is to be taught at the University of South Carolina. Course documents said students would learn to "engage in sound and substantiated scholarly think...
