Ozcan is based at the University of Manchester. He is a Research Fellow at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR, formerly PREST) and is the editor of Foresight: the journal of future studies, strategic thinking and policy. In MIoIR, he is engaged in various research and teaching activities. His research activity has been focused mostly upon long-term policy and strategy making with particular emphasis upon Foresight methodologies and their implementation in socio-economic and technological fields at the supra-national, national, regional and sectoral levels. With a PhD from the “Foresight and Prospective Studies Programme” of the University of Manchester, Ozcan has kept abreast of the latest in academic research on improving the quality of futures research. He has introduced novel concepts like “Systemic Foresight Methodology (SFM)” and “Innovation Foresight”, which have been applied successfully to address long term issues involved in Sustainable Development, Renewable Energies, Information and Communication Technologies, and Development and Poverty.

Can you envisage any major wild cards positive or negative that may occur in the next 20 years?
 
The amount of information we share by typing, which will not be manageable in the future. There are multiple sources of information and it seems to be increasing exponentially. It will be very difficult to manage and we need some smart ways of selecting what is really important. I see, for example, people using Twitter and tools like that. I don’t know who the audience is, but there is a bombardment of messages. We have a limited amount of hours in the day and we will have to find new ways of dealing with this information. There are multiple sources of information and there will be a wild card which I call ‘information bombardment’. This will be the case in less than 20 years. Maybe we will find a solution. It is about the quantity and quality. and about our limitations as humans, our information processing capability. I would call this wild card ‘office less’. In the future there won’t be any office space, because we will have information tools anywhere. We will transmit information as we start thinking about it. So with these new tools and screens and office environments, we will have a lot of empty office buildings which we will need to do something with, because we won’t need them any more. We won’t need to go to a place to share information – we will do this by using transfer tools. We will be closer to virtual offices. We will not need to go to the office to share information and do work, especially in service delivery work. Most other work, like production activity, will remain, but I expect it will also change its shape because there will probably be more use of robots. We will need to create some employment for people or they will be on holiday continuously. That is a serious threat for the human population. If we have so many idle people around it may create some social disturbances. If everything is done by robots and artificial intelligence, we won’t have much to think about. We may start creating problems and there may be an increase in crime.
 
 Do you have any evidence of this or is this just a thought process you go through?
 
This is what I am saying as a futurist at the moment. There are some indications of that as well. I am just speaking from my observations. These wild cards and weak signals are everywhere. You can do systematic research, quantitative and qualitative, but there are a lot of signals that you can interpret in different ways and try to give some meaning to. We were doing a Big Picture survey with 300 experts around the world. There is a paper that is coming; it has not been published yet. We did this with results from the FDA Survey in 2008. We got some big wild cards. Some traditional ones, like Gulf Stream shift and cyber collapse, and some breakthrough in human ageing, some major pandemic outbreaks. Some are quite typical, but some offer new threats or opportunities. Although wild card sounds like a very negative concept, it does not have to be negative necessarily. Even if it is positive, it may bring some negative impacts in the future. I want particularly to discuss the wild cards in biotechnologies, e.g. new body sensors. First of all, as an overall field biology and biotechnology will be quite high on the agenda. My evidence for that is the Foresight Journal. I looked at the keywords of the papers submitted to the journal and created some network diagrams of them, showing what those important keywords are and whether they are located in the centre or at the periphery. An issue such as governance, which I took as an example, was on the periphery and emerged in foresight in 2002 but in the following years, in 2005 and 2006, we saw governance becoming more important, so getting closer to the centre and later still, by 2008/2009/2010, the concept had moved to the centre. But health-related or biotechnology-related issues that I looked at have always been at the centre, so these are important issues and they are gong to be challenges for science and technology. There are always new advancements in this, like combinations of biological electronics and computer technologies etc., which create many opportunities and advancements in genomics and bio technology fields. These are remaining high on the agenda and I anticipate they will be important in the next 20 years and beyond. Biosensors for example are the first signal. Sensors can already detect levels of insulin in the blood for people with diabetes.This technology can track whether blood composition is changing so that they know when they need to act to bring about changes in insulin levels. This can be applicable to the other areas of health. I was reading news about how we are expecting the ‘big earthquake’. They use sensors to detect small changes, which continuously send messages about pressure changes, etc., to the system to which they are connected, so that they can pick up the first signals of an earthquake. In an earthquake a few seconds are very important. You can save millions of lives if you are aware of it 10-15 seconds before it happens, as this gives people time to escape from buildings. It is unknown at the moment, but similar sensors can be put into human bodies to tell you the composition of your body and your blood. There will be many healthy people in the future and the wild card is that people will start living longer and there will be many pressures on economic and social systems. The generational gaps will be even bigger, so whereas now we have three or four generations living at the same time, in the future we will have 10 generations living at the same time. This may again result in disrespect of older people and the formation of movements against old people because they won’t die naturally, spreading the view that they may have to be killed. They can continue contributing to the economy by paying tax, working longer and the retirement age will be 150. Over the 20-year time span we are discussing, we will see significant increase in life expectancy.
 
 What kind of future research can we do to reduce this dramatic impact of the longevity of elderly people?
 
First of all, there are some positive things. This is a negative impact of a positive wild card. On the positive side, there is a lot of research to be done on biotechnologies, sensor technologies and all these electronics. Multidisciplinary research will offer many new opportunities. I think this is the area to focus on, because we don’t actually know much about how nature works or how our body works. We should look at the whole system, not just technology. Again, a systemic approach, including social and political problems we need to regulate and making sure these technologies are used ethically, that they don’t harm society overall and that we don’t change the balance of nature and society. Similarly, we need to keep local cultures, languages, and social diversity and this should be looked at as an overall system. So we should see a lot of research to be done not just in this technological field but in other related areas: social sciences, etc. In workplaces there is probably a lot more substitution of people with robots.
 
What are the weak signals that, if detected, could hint at a growing likelihood of the wild cards that you mentioned?
 
I think I have mentioned some of those weak signals. I see some indications of changes in scientific journals where this is emerging – there is a focus and an intensity in this area of biology, biotechnologies. 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 and very immature, but looking at current research we can come up with the ideas that body sensors might be possible in the future. Or some body computers, like those in cars, which indicate when fuel will be required. With the body we only go to the doctors once we have a complaint. If we could get weak signals of something coming, we could help ourselves and reduce the load on the health system.
 
 What about nanotechnologies: do they talk about those a lot too?
 
They are inseparable from all the developments. The body sensors could only be possible with nanotechnology. Nanorobots and integrated electronic devices are the intermediate steps. More advanced steps are biomarkers so they can indicate some change organically, then putting electronic nanodevices into the body. These electronic nanodevices will be a more intermediate step, i.e until 2020. This is not too far away, so we may be at that stage, but these other developments may come a little later. If you think how much time someone needs to gain enough knowledge to specialize in a topic, you realize it is not far off.
 
You mentioned more than one wild card or weak signal. Can you identify any causal relationship between them?
 
A a lot of causal relationships exist; the most important thing is having this systemic approach – looking at how social, technological, economic and political issues are related to each other. Looking, for example, at what it would mean if people start living longer, which sounds like a good thing. It will have many benefits, more healthy people, less economic burden, but more social disturbances. All these issues, even if they are basic science, should be approached from this type of perspective, because there will be some practical applications in our lives. We need this holistic point of view.
 
Looking ahead to the future of European Research, which of the wild cards or weak signals you have mentioned should be given top priority in EU research?
 
Biotechnology will offer a lot of things. It will offer a lot of other opportunities, such as the substitution of cars in their current forms, which still look much as they used to 100 years ago. Very little progress has been made on this, so maybe we will find some new forms of transportation, not necessarily wheel-based. I don’t know if Europe will be competitive on that. America is leading on it, and the UK is one of the leading countries too. Other countries will also perform well: China and even India. Some surprising actors may appear. Con Solon, whom I met in a Foresight Conference, has been looking at biotechnology in foresight.
 
 Do you prefer other definitions of wild card and weak signals? If these concepts are ambiguous, how could they be more clarified and defined?
 
Terminology and clarification have been the most difficult areas in foresight and futures, because people don’t agree about what foresight, forecasting and things like that are. I know of some unsuccessful attempts at definitions, but, coming to wild cards, it could be a little more precise. I was working on this with Jack Smith: low probability events, with very high impacts. They are unexpected events, like shocks or surprises. It is important to assess their impact. We say high impact, but what do we mean by that?  Impact will make a wild card a wild card. But the definition of an impact is as important as the definition of a wild card itself, because it will bring many new challenges and opportunities which we may not have previously considered or prepared for. So those events which may not have been thought about or which we may not be prepared for can also be called wild cards. They are unexpected, because we are not prepared for them. We could not consider them previously. So they are wild cards because they are unexpected. We only talk about volcano eruptions and how much disaster they cause after they have happened. We talk about the typical example of an asteroid hitting Earth, but they are hitting Earth continuously; it looks as if it is something that will never happen, but it can. The Americans are more aware of this type of asteroid impact event.
 
 Are there interesting lessons from previous foresight studies that employed the wild card and weak signal approach that you can think of?You mentioned something from the Big Picture Survey?Did that employ the wild card/weak signal approach with the same definitions?
 
Yes. We could not find a collective definition of horizon scanning terminology, such as what is a trend, a driver of change, a weak signal, a wild card. We did find them all separately, so one of the biggest contributions of this paper is to bring all these definitions together. It is a more workable definition, which people can take as a reference. From the previous studies, we learn that there have been many horizon scanning activities and some are still ongoing, because scanning is a new activity compared to foresight and futures and is becoming more fashionable among policy makers – the idea of being ahead of time. I think the most important lesson is that only a few foresight studies suggested wild cards and weak signals. Most of them repeated what is already evident. This experience shows us there is a need for methodological advancement. Our paper searched for a new methodology by looking at networks and issues and how unusual issues can be related to each other, and getting some signals from that. There might be many other ways of detecting wild cards and weak signals before they emerge, but looking at what has been done so far I have not seen any impressive wild cards and weak signals which can be disruptive in the future. They just extrapolate what has happened already, rather than present something that is entirely new. For example, after the September 11 attack this was the new definition of what a wild card would look like; or natural phenomena or pandemic outbreaks, which we can only think about after they happen – bird flu, swine flu, is there going to be horse flu next? 
 
 What are the best methods to identify wild cards and weak signals?
 
There are different qualitative and quantitive methods which can be used. Consulting people who have expertise in certain areas is useful, but this is not enough. More important is how you make sense of it. Making sense of things is as important as seeing them. If you don’t know what to do with the things you see, then actually you are in a position of not knowing anything about them.
 
 How do you go about making sense of them?
 
Is anything actionable or not? There is a lot of interpretation and subjectivity in all of this, although we have some tools: interviewing and talking to people; doing some sort of analysis or looking at patent data, etc.; searching for some new ways as we try to bring scanning, networks and scenarios together by integrating some of the existing methods, not only in foresight but also outside traditional foresight methods, to create new combinations of things. This all provides new opportunities. Sometimes it will give you the same picture, but by turning it upside down or looking at it from behind or from the side, you can come up with different interpretations by using different methodological approaches. I cannot define the best method, as I always say methods are only meaningful as they are made relevant to the context of the problem. You cannot use one single or set of methodologies for all sorts of problems, because each unique situation will require a set of different methods and methodological approaches. That is where the art of foresight is: looking for unique approaches for unique situations and problems. So they need to be understood and analysed properly before talking about methods. There are all sorts of methods and they can be brought together in various ways to tackle different situations. The best method approach does not always work.