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    Backcasting the Future of Decentralized Education

    a short movie made with AI tools

    What if education wasn’t controlled by institutions but shaped by learners, communities, and technology? Using backcasting, I explored a future where learning is decentralized, open, and driven by collaboration—and mapped the steps to get there.

    This vision is inspired by discussions between Sara Skvirsky (IFTF Research Director) and Katherine Prince (VP of Foresight & Strategy, KnowledgeWorks), as well as the 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning - a report that, even today, feels like a glimpse into what’s coming.

    🔹 How do we get there?

    - From institutional control to collective intelligence
    - From passive learning to a culture of creation
    - From centralized credentials to peer-validated knowledge
    - From rigid curriculums to dynamic, adaptive education


    🎥 Watch the short film exploring this future!

    Posted on: 18/02/2025

    Last Edited: 12 days ago

    I Venerdì della Conoscenza1

    Fridays of Knowledge

    The municipality of Diano Marina, a seaside town in the northwestern Liguria region of Italy, in collaboration with the National Research Council of Italy, has launched an initiative in 2022 called “I Venerdi della Conoscenza” (Fridays of Knowledge, hereafter VDC). Link to the webpage.

    The awareness of the possible impacts of emerging technologies and global changes on the society and the economy, prompted the mayor of Diano Marina to ask a group of scientists to design and develop activities for involving local communities in reflection on the future.

    The aim of VDC is to promote and structure a dialogue between young generations and decision makers, using science as an interface.

    A Scientific Committee has identified different aspects to be addressed during meetings that engage the participants to access the state of the art, and discuss them. The ultimate goal of VDC is to involve the local community in becoming more informed and active in shaping the future, which is often regarded as distant from the territorial contexts, and which constitutes the basis of the foresight exercises. The Scientific Committee consists of a selection of the experts who coordinated the Science and Technology Foresight Project of the National Research Council. The involved scientists are a representation of high-level national and international communities.

    Students and teachers from some high schools are involved in advance, in order to brief and prepare questions during the meetings. On scheduled Fridays, the Sala Consigliare of the municipality hosts approximately 100 citizens. Students open the debate with lectures identified the week before, then a moderator initiates a debate with the scientists to elaborate the main concepts and challenges on the selected topics. Open questions from the audience conclude the dialogue, which includes the local public authorities that are invited. The meeting are accessible via streaming for a wider participation.

    Some of the topics also anticipated or were suggested by those identified by a project funded by the European Commission named the Eye of Europe, whose aim is to support the European decision makers to reflect on the research and innovation priorities through foresight processes.

    Posted on: 10/02/2025

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    Last Edited: 12 days ago

    Exploring Futures: Scenario Planning in Collective Consciousness

    Short movie made with AI Tools

    This movie is a way of connecting three domains that bring me joy currently:
    - Strategic Foresight
    - Spirituality
    - AI
    One of the goals is to draw attention to Foresight as one of the Top 5 cutting-edge skills identified in the UN 2.0 agenda, a plan that helps organizations prepare for the future.

    I adapted the Scenario Planning method to explore three possible futures and bring them to life through cinematic storytelling.
    The film also introduces two trained characters, Lina and Arun, within each scenario, making the movie less formal and more engaging.

    I also wanted to show how AI can:
    - Serve as a bridge between ideas and skills from different fields.
    - Help us discover new aspects of human potential.

    This movie isn’t flawless or complete—I’m not a filmmaker, and that’s okay. Its beauty lies in its imperfection, reminding us that sometimes, taking the step to create is more important than getting it perfect. 

    Posted on: 10/02/2025

    Last Edited: 16 days ago

    Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH1

    We work to shape a future worth living around the world.

    GIZ Profile: sustainable development for a liveable future

    As a service provider in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development and international education work, we are dedicated to shaping a future worth living around the world. We have over 50 years of experience in a wide variety of areas, including economic development and employment promotion, energy and the environment, and peace and security. The diverse expertise of our federal enterprise is in demand around the globe – from the German Government, European Union institutions, the United Nations, the private sector, and governments of other countries. We work with businesses, civil society actors and research institutions, fostering successful interaction between development policy and other policy fields and areas of activity. Our main commissioning party is the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

    How GIZ uses Foresight Methods: As a federal enterprise working in the fields of international cooperation for sustainable development and international education, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH is greatly affected by the business environment in which it operates and by trends in Germany, Europe and the world. Dealing with the resulting uncertainty, complexity and fast-paced change is often very challenging. This makes it important for GIZ to understand the underlying drivers of change and possible future developments so that it can prepare for the future and for the crises it will have to address, ultimately making the company and its staff more resilient.  

    Posted on: 06/02/2025

    Last Edited: 23 days ago

    Florenc Demrozi1

    Posted on: 30/01/2025

    Last Edited: 24 days ago

    Wenzel Mehnert1

    The future ain't what it used to be.

    Posted on: 29/01/2025

    Last Edited: a month ago

    Joe Ravetz1

    Posted on: 27/01/2025

    Last Edited: a month ago

    Christophe Thévignot1

    Posted on: 24/01/2025

    Last Edited: a month ago

    Daniil Valéry Lang1

    Posted on: 23/01/2025

    Last Edited: 2 months ago

    Vangavis1

    Home of Innovation

    Posted on: 22/12/2024

    Last Edited: 2 months ago

    Jeroen de Jong1

    In action, we both discover and produce transformative possibility

    Posted on: 20/12/2024

    Last Edited: 2 months ago

    4CF The Futures Literacy Company1

    4CF The Futures Literacy Company is a consultancy entirely focused on strategic foresight and long-term strategies. For nearly two decades, 4CF has been on the mission to help its clients prepare for an uncertain tomorrow. The Company has executed hundreds of projects for private companies, public institutions and international entities, including the European Commission and its agencies (EUDA, ENISA), FAO, UNFCCC, UNESCO, UNEP and UNDP. 4CF is at the forefront of global innovation, and actively contributes to the development of cutting-edge foresight tools, including 4CF HalnyX (Delphi platform), 4CF Sprawlr, 4CF FLEx.

    Posted on: 17/12/2024

    Last Edited: 2 months ago

    Miquel Banchs-Piqué1

    Better late than never

    Posted on: 09/12/2024

    Last Edited: 2 months ago

    Open Discourse - AI and Transhumanism13 April - 13 April 2022

    How machines will change our lives in the future?

    Every month we discuss a different emerging topic and invite experts to start the discussion. Afterwards, the community has the opportunity to engage in the discussion.

    Topic in April: AI and Transhumanism - How machines will change our lives in the future?

    Speakers: 

    • Fabian J. G. Westerheide (Founder & CEO of Rise of AI)
    • Ana Chubinidze (AI Governance, AI Policy Advisor, CEO @AdalanAI & Founder @AIGI)
    • Samira Khan ( Director, Citizenship + Market Dev, AI & Sustainability at Microsoft)
    • Elisa Czerski (Founder and CEO at N Robotics )


    Each month we discuss a different emerging topic and invite experts to open the discussion in a panel setup. Afterwards, the community has the opportunity to engage in the discussion via a QnA or Fishbowl session, depending on the topic and the number of participants.

    If you're interested in becoming a speaker for one of our other events, please send us an email at info@futures4europe.org

    Posted on: 07/12/2024

    Last Edited: 2 months ago

    Workshop | Futures Wheels27 April - 27 April 2022

    The Futures Wheel is a form of structured brainstorming that helps participants visualize the impact of trends or emerging signals.
    Registration is closed

    In this workshop, we will use the method Futures Wheel to explore the following futures topics:

    • Smart Spaces
    • Climate Change
    • Global Commons
    • Social Confrontation
    • Criminal and Lawful Activities
    • Transhumanist Revolution
    • General AI
    • Alternative Energy Sources

    The participants can decide between different breakout rooms to discuss the impacts of the topics on the near and far future.

    Purpose of the method
    The Futures Wheel is a form of structured brainstorming that helps participants visualize how and to what extent trends or events might impact the organization, society or strategy area in question. It is particularly useful for identifying and mapping connections and causalities. It also helps us think far into the future as it is a very flexible, yet powerful tool.

    Read more: https://millennium-project.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/06-Futures-Wheel.pdf

    Posted on: 07/12/2024

    Last Edited: 3 months ago

    Foresight on Demand: “Foresight towards the 2nd Strategic Plan for Horizon Europe”July 2023

    This is the final report from a foresight study that aimed at supporting the development of the Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe (2025-2027). The study lasted for 18 months and involved a wide range of activities that this report aims at presenting.

    These activities aimed at providing early-stage strategic intelligence and sense-making contributions – issues, trends, perspectives, ideas - that could contribute novel elements to the more structured processes of strategic planning that were to follow. The work followed two important directions that were recommended by EFFLA (2012)1 as core elements of bringing foresight into EU R&I policy: knowledge-based review and broad engagement.

    Knowledge based review was conducted with the help of the 40 experts who constituted the team that worked on the project. All these experts have contributed as authors to the authorship of the different chapters of this report. About 300 additional experts contributed to the project through its numerous workshops that helped shape the scenarios and ideas about their policy implications, and through membership in the on-line platform of the project at www.futures4europe.eu, which reached 307 people. Last, we acknowledge the 943 experts who responded to our final consultation survey on the implications of our foresight for the directions of EU R&I policy.

    The foresight process
    The foresight process in support of the 2nd Strategic Plan comprised a wide spectrum of activities:
    • As a reference point for the exploratory work, the explicit and implicit impact assumptions of the 1st Strategic Plan were identified and visualised with the help of a qualitative system analysis and modelling tool for causal loop analysis.
    • An exploratory analysis of forward-looking sources (e.g. foresight reports, web-based horizon scanning) was conducted to identify relevant trends and signals of unexpected developments. These were discussed in online workshops and on www.futures4europe.eu.
    • An outlook on emerging developments in the global and European context of EU R&I policy was developed drawing on a major online workshop in autumn 2021 with some 60 participants, experts and policy makers, who worked with multi-level context scenarios and specific context narratives about emerging disruptions.
    • On that basis and in close consultation with the European Commission involving another major workshop in February 2022 which brought together 80 participants, Expert Teams were set up to develop disruptive scenarios in five areas of major interest. Each team ran several internal workshops but also involved further experts and Commission staff in their work, both through the online platform and through a final policy-oriented workshop. The foresight work within the areas of interest resulted in five deep dives on the following topics:
    > Climate change, Research, and Innovation: Radical Options from Social Change to Geoengineering
    > Hydrogen Economy – A radical alternative
    > The EU in a Volatile New World - The challenge of global leadership
    > Global Commons
    > Transhumanist Revolutions
    • Further areas of interest identified since were explored through review papers aiming to capture major trends, developments and scenario sketches in relation to further disruptive developments
    > Social Confrontations
    > Artificial General Intelligence: Issues and Opportunities
    > The Interpenetration of Criminal and Lawful Economic Activities
    > The Future of Health
    • A third major workshop took place in October 2022 bringing together all the thematic strands of work and addressing possible R&I policy implications from this work. Participation in this workshop reached 250 individuals over 2 days.
    • Building on the workshop, the online Dynamic Argumentative Delphi survey Research4Futures collect suggestions from further experts and citizens about the implications of this foresight work for the priorities of EU R&I policy.

    This foresight study has been the most widely engaging foresight exercise yet aiming to support EU R&I policy. Through this broad engagement, the study did not only develop intelligence for the 2nd Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe but also contributed to the development of an EU R&I foresight community, one that is an asset for future R&I policies across Europe. 

    Posted on: 30/11/2024

    Last Edited: 3 months ago

    Insight Foresight Institute1

    IF-Institute

    Posted on: 25/11/2024

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    Last Edited: 2 years ago

    Artificial General Intelligence Issues and Opportunities

    National governments and multi-lateral organizations like the European Union, OECD, and UNESCO have identified values and principles for artificial narrow intelligence and national strategies for its development. But little attention has been given to identifying the beneficial initial conditions for future Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The initial conditions for AGI will determine if Artificial Super Intelligence will evolve to benefit humanity or not. Even if international agreements are reached on the beneficial initial conditions for AGI, a global governance system will still be needed to enforce them and oversee the development and management of AGI. Since it may take ten, twenty, or more years to create and ratify an international AGI treaty and establish a global AGI governance system, and since some experts believe it is possible to have AGI within ten to twenty years, it is therefore important to work on these issues as soon as possible. The most critical AGI issues are its initial conditions and global governance. These issues are important for governments to get right from the outset. The Millennium Project is currently exploring these issues.

    Posted on: 12/05/2023

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    Last Edited: 2 years ago

    Shaping the Future of AI in Policing

    ALIGNER's Pragmatic Approach

    ALIGNER aspires to rally European stakeholders anxious about AI's role in law enforcement. The project's goal is to create a unified front to identify strategies that will not only bolster the strength of law enforcement agencies through AI but also ensure public benefit. But how far into the future is it useful to look?

    Posted on: 11/07/2023

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    Last Edited: a year ago

    Prompting the Future of IP Regulation & Innovation Management

    Anselm Kamperman Sanders and Anke Moerland, Professors of Intellectual Property Law at Maastricht University, share their ‘expert-generated’ responses to prompts concerning the outlook of intellectual property regulation. The two coordinators of the Horizon 2020 European IP Institutes Network Innovation Society project (EIPIN-Innovation Society), completed in 2021, point to global trends and highlight how emerging challenges for IP regulation and innovation management are already on the table.

    Posted on: 02/12/2023

    Post Image

    Last Edited: a year ago

    An Interview with Eye of Europe's Project Coordinator

    Futures4Europe interviewed Eye of Europe’s Coordinator, Radu Gheorghiu, foresight expert at UEFISCDI, the Romanian Research & Innovation funding agency. What does the future look like for R&I in Europe? How does foresight play a role? Radu provides a glimpse into these questions and Eye of Europe’s central role in them.

    Posted on: 04/03/2024

    Post Image

    Last Edited: 9 months ago

    Shaping Futures, Story by Story

    Posted on: 30/05/2024

    Last Edited: 3 months ago

    S&T Foresight - Models, Algorithms, and Data for the Future

    Results for the working group Models, Algorithms, and Data for the Future are available at: http://foresight.cnr.it/working-groups/wg-mad4future.html 

    Posted on: 25/11/2024

    Last Edited: 3 months ago

    Aureli SORIA-FRISCH1

    Posted on: 18/11/2024

    Last Edited: 3 months ago

    Mateus Panizzon, PhD.1

    Theoretical dimensions for integrating research on anticipatory governance, scientific foresight and sustainable S&T public policy design. Avaliable at Technology in Society https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160791X24003063

    Posted on: 18/11/2024

    Post Image

    Last Edited: 4 months ago

    Shaping futures, story by story

    Posted on: 31/10/2024

    Last Edited: 4 months ago

    Foresight towards the 2nd Strategic Plan for Horizon Europe1June 2021 - May 2023

    This foresight study aimed at supporting the development of the Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe (2025-2027), by providing early-stage strategic intelligence and sense-making that could contribute novel elements to the processes of strategic planning.

    The study, which was launched in mid-2021 and lasted almost two years, has been the most widely engaging foresight exercise yet aiming to support EU R&I policy. Through this broad engagement, the study did not only develop intelligence for the 2nd Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe but also contributed to the development of an EU R&I foresight community hosted by futures4europe.eu, one that is an asset for future R&I policies across Europe.

    The foresight process in support of the 2nd Strategic Plan comprised a wide spectrum of activities:

    • As a reference point for the exploratory work, the explicit and implicit impact assumptions of the 1st Strategic Plan were identified and visualised with the help of a qualitative system analysis and modelling tool for causal loop analysis.
    • An exploratory analysis of forward-looking sources (e.g. foresight reports, web-based horizon scanning) was conducted to identify relevant trends and signals of unexpected developments. These were discussed in online workshops and on futures4europe.eu.
    • An outlook on emerging developments in the global and European context of EU R&I policy was developed drawing on a major online workshop in autumn 2021 with some 60 participants, experts and policy makers, who worked with multi-level context scenarios and specific context narratives about emerging disruptions.
    • On that basis and in close consultation with the European Commission involving another major workshop in February 2022 which brought together 80 participants, Expert Teams were set up to develop disruptive scenarios in five areas of major interest. Each team ran several internal workshops but also involved further experts and Commission staff in their work, both through the online platform and through a final policy-oriented workshop. The foresight work within the five areas of interest resulted in deep dives on the following topics:
      > Climate change, Research, and Innovation: Radical Options from Social Change to Geoengineering
      > Hydrogen Economy – A radical alternative
      > The EU in a Volatile New World - The challenge of global leadership
      > Global Commons
      > Transhumanist Revolutions
    • Further areas of interest identified were explored through review papers aiming to capture major trends, developments and scenario sketches in relation to further disruptive developments:
      > Social Confrontations
      > Artificial General Intelligence: Issues and Opportunities
      > The Interpenetration of Criminal and Lawful Economic Activities
      > The Future of Health
    • A third major workshop took place in October 2022 bringing together all the thematic strands of work and addressing possible R&I policy implications from this work. Participation in this workshop reached 250 individuals over 2 days.
    • Building on the workshop, the online Dynamic Argumentative Delphi survey Research4Futures collected suggestions from almost 950 contributors from Europe and beyond about the implications of this foresight work for the priorities of EU R&I policy.

    The detailed description of the foresight work and the resulting outputs are available in the final report of the project.

    This foresight study has been implemented through the Foresight on Demand framework contract, by a team of 40 experts. About 300 additional experts contributed to the project through its numerous workshops that helped shape the scenarios and their policy implications. 

    Posted on: 21/10/2024