Earth4All

Travelling into the [future] (spanish: Viajando al [futuro]) is a long-term project aimed at developing desirable future scenarios for sustainable tourism in Spain together with local stakeholders and experts in the field. The project is funded by the European Climate Foundation and implemented in a collaboration between Futures Probes and Tipi.  Process & Methodology The project was structured into three main phases: Research, Crowdsourcing, Storytelling. In the research phase, a PESTLE analysis and the elaboration of local stakeholder maps identified environmental key factors and networks. In the crowdsourcing phase, participatory workshops with local stakeholders and a Delphi survey with tourism experts were run in parallel, built upon and at the same time challenging the knowledge gathered in the previous phase.  In the Storytelling phase, the results were used as the fundament for building six future scenarios, visualised as a written narrative accompanied by an illustration.  Outcome Building up and strengthening local stakeholder networks and generating ideas for future sustainable tourism(s). Gathering of key insights on desirable, possible and likely future developments of tourism in Spain.  Identification and discussion of needs, desires, worries and attitudes of tourism stakeholders – in its complexity and diversity.  Six future scenarios to inspire can activate communities, organisations and citizens to define measures that accelerate the transformation towards a better, more sustainable tourism.  Next steps Developing indicators to measure the performance of (future) touristic activities in terms of their sustainability.  Creating a network of change agents within the tourism sector to exchange experiences, needs, knowledge and to collectively identify possible synergies and action steps to be taken.  Designing experimental pilot projects focusing on solving some of the concrete challenges identified as common to one or all of the regions observed.

This rapid exploration is part of the Foresight towards the 2nd Strategic Plan project. Individual and public health are probably THE most important issues for citizens and governments. In spite of major advances in curing of major diseases over the past century and a half, and a growing recognition of the importance of preventative measures, there are constantly new frontiers emerging in health-related S&T. In a nutshell, the most important threats to individual and public health are: Emergence of new thus far unknown communicable diseases (most recently COVID 19), possibly given rise to global pandemics; The declining effectivity of existing antibiotics, and growing difficulties in discovering new ones or finding other ways of strengthening antimicrobial resistance; Growing incidence of non-communicable diseases (dementia, mental illness, obesity, diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases and the like), often resulting from unhealthy environmental conditions (e.g. air pollution), malnutrition and lack of physical exercise. These growing health threats are counteracted by new biomedical insights and technological means to help maintain and restore health: Insights into how our individual internal and external health “ecosystems” and microbioms influence our state of health; Understanding of the mechanisms and pre-dispositions of various diseases, which opens up new opportunities for identifying new vaccines and more personalised possibilities of medication treatment; New possibilities of repairing or even replacing organs and influencing the process of cellular division, which open up further possibilities of human enhancement (see Deep Dive on Transhumanism). Latest developments in better exploiting inter-connected health data for personalised treatmetns and prevention. About this topic A major challenge consists of preparing public health systems to better handle health risks and make novel medical possibilities widely available at affordable costs to the individual and to society. To be future-proof, health systems need to change in many regards, but opinions are split about the right way forward. They are supposed to absorb innovative approaches for cure and prevention, set incentices right, while at the same time keeping the costs for fair and sustainable health as low as possible. The recent COVID 19 pandemic has also shown that optimising health system capacities may well be cost-efficient under normal circumstances, but it endangers the ability to respond in a resilient manner to high-pressure situations like the one we have been experiencing during the past two COVID years. At the same time, the health systems in most European countries are confronted with shortages of health professional, from medical doctors to care professions. Drivers of change The interaction between new threats and new promises is influenced by a range of other factors. Closer interaction with thus far untouched natural ecosystems, where humans can get in contact with novel life-threatening diseases, represents a real challenge for public and individual health. The fast spread of dangerous communicable diseases is accelerated by global individual mobility. The prevalence of unhealthy lifestyles represents an issue of major concern, in particular the widespread adoption of “Western” and meat-rich diets. Although there are counter-movements, not least for climate-related reasons, the climate footprint of food supply continues to grow. Environmental degradation and air pollution represent important factors negatively influencing individual health, and well beyond respiratory damages. Climate change can at least reinforce health-threatening incidences, and lead to the spread of diseases and of their carriers to areas where they have not been detected before. Micro and nano-devices can be used for prostetics and implants as well as for carrying drugs to designated places in the body. Digitalisation opens up new opportunities for addressing a range of health challenges: from pacemakers to brain interfaces, and from online medical advice to big data analytics for diagnosis and personalised health services. The promise of pharmacogenomics for personalised health services continues to be held up by industry. It projects a huge potential once genetic information is decoded and understood. Costs of public health systems have been growing, and while digitalisation may well help reduce costs, it is also a factor driving a shift towards a two- or three-tier health system. Futures What if healthy life styles were rewarded, and unhealthy ones penalised? What if the most advanced preventative measures and treatments were available to the most well-off citizens? What if digital implants were hacked and manipulated? What if environmental degradation and air pollution continued to rise in major urban agglomerations? What if the costs of the opportunities inherent to new health technologies exceeded 25% of GDP? What if major pandemics arise much more frequently than in the past, demanding high flexibility from the health system and its employees?

This rapid exploration is part of the Foresight towards the 2nd Strategic Plan for Horizon Europe  project. As legal order evolves, crime evolves too. Being unbound by the rule of law, crime is a very innovative “sector”, in which innovation is driven by the incentive of high gains as rewards for taking some risks of legal consequences in case the crime is recognised as such and reported to law enforcement agencies. In the case of economic crimes, experts regularly refer to especially low detection and prosecution rates. Among other reasons this is attributable to three particularities being quite special to economic crime: Depending on the modus operandi used for commiting the crime, the victim(s) might not even be aware of the incident. In fear of e.g. losses of reputation and/or customers' trust that may in future cause revenues to decline, companies that have been victims are reluctant to report crimes to law enforcement agencies. Even if crimes are reported, there frequently is a mismatch between the criminal act itself and the offense reported. For example, a business might be aware that a computer has been stolen and reports this incident to the police while the actual target might not be the computer itself but the (sensitive) business information stored on it. About this topic The area of economic crime includes a multitude of quite diverse offenses. Thus, the first relevant question is: What ist the aim or target of the offense? Three main areas of economic crime can be distinguished: Financial crimes, such as blackmailing, embezzlement and tax evasion, often tied to attempts of cutting social security costs Cybercrime, which comprises a wide range of activities from digital scam of sensitive information and spam mails to manipulation of websites and thec onstruction of fake websites or profiles Manipulation of stock exchanges (either for economic gain or for creating geopolitical tensions) A second relevant question relates to who commits economic crime. Next to organised crime groups using criminal proceeds in the legitimate economy (e.g. money laundering, corrupting politicians and government officials, etc.), there are also legitimate businesses facilitating unlawful economic activities (e.g. accountants and lawyers advising criminals) or acting unlawfully (e.g. supporting companies in tax evasion). And there are novel and innovative economic activities that enter new terrain where no clear-cut legal rules exist yet (e.g. in the early days of crypto-currencies). Another question concerns responsibility for prevention as well as for prosecution. Is economic crime a relevant issue to policy-makers, especially for R&I policy-makers? And if not, who should assume responsibility for it (e.g. law enforcement agencies, private security agencies,...). For instance, data can be stolen either by internal perpetrator or external perpetrators. The responsibility for prevention is likely to be different in these cases. A related issue is to identify the causes of non-detection of these crimes, e.g. lack of legal and other experts. There are different types of “illegal earnings”, e.g. (i) criminal acts gaining a large amount of money at once, (ii) digitally receiving small amouts of money from many people over a longer period of time, unnoticed but evnatually amounting to a large sum for the criminals, (iii) a legal enterprises engaged in illegal/ criminal activities (on purpose or without noticing that this is illegal or a grey zone). As the world economy operates more and more through interconnected computerised transactions, new possibilities for intertwining criminal and legal economic activities open up as well as new opportunities for law enforcement.There is a view that the proceeds of crime can be tracked and removed, and thus the interpenetration of criminal markets and legal markets can be controlled. However, there is also a view that establishing the lawful origins of funds used in every transaction is impossible and even undesirable. What level of control is technically feasible and socially desirable? There are at least three types of S&T associated with tracking, managing and fighting crime. One is ICT related, from monitoring, analysing, tracking etc. An interesting issue is whether technological solutions to full tracability can be applied to money (e.g. those applied to products using chemicals)? A second is regulatory techniques for preventing “innovators” from moving outside the sphere of lawful activities, from going too far and entering a grey zone that is unregulated. The third is forensics: techniques of reconstituting what took place and thus attributing responsibility for crimes. Drivers and barriers  Major drivers for crime are linked to motivation (high gains because of low perceived low risk, that is, the ‘cost-benefit calculation’ suggests that committing a certain crime is going to be profitable). Technological innovation in digitalisation is an essential precondition for further development of new and already existing crime potential in digital fields, from payment systems to crypto circumvention. We can distinguish roughly several types of motivation for crimes: the intrinsic motivation of engineers to research and innovate can be exploited by criminals; the (felt) marginalised individual or government that is searching for its niche to find extra income, even if it comes illegally; the politically motivated wish to spy on or threaten other countries. The primaeval motivations might be the wish for power, influence, and greed. There are also interesting technological developments emerging that might open up new avenues for criminal activity, often enabled by digitalisation of economic activities. For instance, digitally enabled human enhancement technologies open up possibilities for biohacking, and the ambition to better monitor supply and value chains may open doors to new forms of mis-using this kind of information. Fake profiles and ‘deep fakes” technologies can also be misused to commit digital crimes while staying anonymous on the internet. It seems to be a competition, a kind of race and mutual pushing and pulling between law-makers, police and criminals of who finds a new niche, that is, new opportunities with software, hardware or regulation, to occupy and exploit. On the side of law enforcement agencies, skills and motivation for long search or detection of crime in cyberspace are often missing. It is a matter of resources that are available and time that may be spent on detecting and fighting this kind of crime. One facilitating condition for criminal economic activities is the recent deregulation of financial markets. That opens up windows of opportunity for making money in a grey zone or illegally. In addition, the rate of innovation in digitalisation is so high that regulation can possibly be enacted only with a considerable delay - creativity in crime always leads to new means faster than the introduction of appropriate regulation As the complexity of these issues increases, there is a lack of experts to support law enforcement and we observe a skill mismatch in the technical, social, and legal personnel but also a lack of legal entities to follow up. People are more and more vulnerable to digital fraud and other kinds of crime in the virtual world as new possibilities are constantly emerging. However, if people do not use digital technologies (as a protective measure), they would be excluded from certain economic activities and social life forms. When there is two much security (e.g. with two or more factor authentication), technical hurdles are high and patience is needed. Futures What if criminals are ahead of lawful companies, regulatory bodies, law enforcement agencies, regulatory organisations and other decision-makers in digital innovations? What if criminals offer significantly higher “salaries” to experts, e.g. skilled personnel, or personnel for law-enforcement, personnel that is rare or has high specialisation? What if criminals become major R&D funders? What if they invest and their investment proceeds from illegal activities directly in R&I and people are dependent on this research? What if the full traceability of money poses a risk to creativity and innovation? What if the reliance on self-regulation facilitates economic misdemeanour? What if the world/ parts of our societies are threatened by crime and prosecution of crime digitally? What if the criminal elements control a large part of the economy? What if rogue states facilitate illegal activities, e.g. via cryptocurrencies? What if a large number of companies under financial pressure decide to resort to criminal “service providers” in specific fields, e.g. for waste disposal?

The twelve scenarios in this deep dive are informed by transhumanism, portraying futures in which the human condition – our bodies, functions, and lives – and the features of societies are fundamentally transformed by technology. Even though scenarios are built along the lines of particular scientific and/or technological advancements, the discussion spreads over sociotechnical ensembles and the re-conceptualization of the relationship between technology and society by 2040. The work leading to this report started with a horizon scanning exercise to identify a series of technological innovations and scientific breakthroughs that may be considered key factors towards re-engineering human nature. In parallel, the authors explored diverse narratives regarding the human condition and significance in the world, dreams and fears embodied in the so-called collective imaginary, echoing through myths and fantasies to literature, cinematography and the wider culture. At the intersection of these explorations, twelve topics were selected and further expanded into scenarios. They are not intended to cover the full spectrum of themes regarding human enhancement, but present a relevant ‘sample’ of potential future trajectories. We propose these narratives as exploratory scenarios, describing futures where both positive and negative consequences are palpable. They are not normative, outlininga vision of the future deemed desirable. We invite readers to regard them as devices for imagining the future and debating the future. They aim to nurture a reflection on the dynamics of change, future opportunities and potential threats, and in doing so they contribute to future preparedness. Three types of scenarios were developed: The first type describe futures where scientific and technological advancements enhance embodied experiences: Sensory augmentation:  extending human senses beyond the natural limits and adding sensorial modalities which are not native to humans. Sensory and brain stimulation, psychedelic microdosing: inducing altered states of consciousness, for healing purposes or for fostering new perspectives on being human. Molecular therapies for delaying aging; and new artificial reproductive technologies allowing people to be fertile until much older age. The second type explore futures where human capabilities are extended by embodying non-biological means: a significant share of elderly people using exoskeletons for prolonging active life, for maintaining their mobility or as a form of assisted living;  brain-computer interfaces leveraged in semi-automatized work environments, to improve learning outcomes, and to control smart devices;  Brain to brain communication supporting cognitive and emotion sharing, leading to the creation of ‘hive minds’ covering multiple aspects of life. The third type focus on the simulation and replication of the human body and mind: Digital body twins allowing alert signals for disease prevention and the simulation of the short- and long-term effects of a person’s behavior on their health and body; Digital twins of the brain allowing testing hypotheses in cognitive science, in mental health studies, responses to different types of treatments;  Digital immersive worlds – gaming/ fantasy worlds or ‘mirror worlds’ that are replicating real-life environments – hosting interactions among people and automated entities;  Digital replicas of the deceased changing the socio-political understanding of grief; and Artificial agents with complex underlying computational procedures (including e.g. self-reflection, development of value system, affective computing) and sophisticated interfaces calling for new theoretical frameworks of consciousness. *** The twelve scenarios presented in the paper are part of  the Foresight towards the 2nd Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe project, which was conducted by Foresight on Demand Consortium on behalf of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD).