Fast Future

it we need not only to develop alternative future scenarios but also to change how we think, perceive, and deal with uncertainty. We should embrace it, and get comfortable with it as a part of our organizational culture. We need a mental reset. The cognitive operative systems illustrated by Dr. Sotiriadis should rest on the following three pillars. They use a systems-based approach, similar to strategic foresight, and allow us to understand the inter-connectivity of events and how something that looks perhaps far away or distant from our organization or mission, actually has a lot of interrelated points. They question status quo and core assumptions, figuring out how we can constantly iterate particular visions of the future. They embrace analytic complexity in our processes of thoughts, with nonlinearity, co-dependent variables, and multi-source causality.

The U.S. Air Force has recently released a Global Futures Report (AFWIC 2020) that include four scenarios relevant to national defense. The project partnered with a futurist and expert of virtual reality, Cathy Hackel, and set the four scenarios into a virtual reality format, so that the senior leaders can actually live them in an immersive experience of geopolitical competition in 2035. These experiments set the stage for changing the way we make decisions, and how we consume information.

Sotiriadis observed that we are living a renaissance now. Foresight has been around for a long time but many recognize now that we need it. In our “futures of futures”, proposes Dr. Sotiriadis, we will be seeing chief futurist titles in many more entities. All of this will happen on the heels of virtual and augmented reality experiments. They allow us to imagine completely new possibilities, and people who have not necessarily participated in building these preferred futures can become part of the dialogue, and develop a futures-based mentality in their day-today life.

Innovating biodiversity data, indicators and value for future generations

The EEA is a network of 32 members and collaborating countries that works with a partnership model. Its main work with the Environmental Commission is managing and reporting on core data flows related to how our environment is affected and increasingly examining how healthy and resilient ecosystems can minimize the effects of natural disasters and global climate change.

EEA is currently exploring how foresight can be integrated into its work. Maintaining rich biodiversity and healthy ecosystems represents complex systemic challenges because causes and effects are multiple, and their measurement is complicated. Futures literacy provides the ability and opportunity to accommodate to the emergent nature of unfolding complexity.

The 8th Environmental Action Program (EAP) sets a systemic and ambitious policy context for the European Environmental Policy until 2030. It is connected to the European Green Deal that showed a clear need for a transformative change and for a long-term transition through a systemic approach. There are other related policies, such as the Biodiversity strategy towards 2030 and the climate law, with a systematic ambition. The European Commission has also identified foresight as a key tool to support this transformative agenda, and EEA is consequently building strategy and a vision with trusted and actionable knowledge in order to inform decisionmaking about priorities and solutions in the European policy context. Using the future would help open up the capacity to learn and respond to emergent challenges.

EEA has already had a history of working on foresight through a National Reference Centre on Forward Looking Information Services (NRC FLIS) since 2007, and it has launched a Foresight function within the agency last year, working with the Foresight 4 Action programme, an organizationwide program to embed foresight into the different streams of EEA.

Transition from ANI to AGI will change learning and education

Starting from some insights from the three-year international study “Work/Tech 2050. Scenarios and actions” (Glenn, 2019), a need for an International assessment of future governance models for the transition from Artificial Narrow (ANI) to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) emerged. If the initial conditions of AGI are not “right,” then Artificial Intelligence (AI) could evolve into an Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) that could threaten the future of humanity. Since it is likely to take ten years to: develop ANI to AGI international or global agreements; design the governance system; and begin implementation, then it would be wise to begin exploring potential governance approaches and their potential effectiveness now.

Another ongoing MP initiative (in cooperation with the WFSF and the APF) is the Open Letter to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General to support the establishment of a UN Office of Strategic Threats. The idea was raised and discussed in detail during World Future Day, March 1, 2021 . Although the UN includes agencies that are addressing many of the problems facing humanity today, there is no central office to identify, monitor, anticipate, and coordinate research on long-term strategic threats to humanity. Long-range strategic threats to the survival of humanity are well-documented, ranging from the potential of advanced AI growing beyond human control to weakening magnetic fields that protect life on Earth. A UN Office on Strategic Threats, which would centralize and coordinate information and prospective studies on a global scale, could serve international agencies, multilateral organizations, nation-states, the private sector, academia, and humanity in general.

Some suggestions to improve foresight and futures studies from the group discussions

Group 1 discussed how we should proactively protect both humans and nature. Everything is interconnected. There are several crises potentially arising, from different sectors and they are combined (e.g. Climate migration). We should all train in futures literacy and in longerterm thinking for understanding the consequences of our actions.

Group 2 focused on the difficulties to bring alternative futures into many governmental organizations, probably because foresight and futures studies are still considered non-scientific fields. The group also discussed some connections between futures studies and history research, their differences and similarities, and the importance (and the lack) of implementation of foresight in policymaking.

Group 3 discussed the future evolution of AI and the impact of AGI, and about how humans could change in relation to that, for some in a positive way, for others with the need to carefully address it. AI evolution, alongside military unknowns, climate change and biodiversity, are huge trends that need specific futures studies and foresight. However, the group wondered how to do that in a mature way. Outside of our comfort zone, Futures Literacy might be a good idea, eventually combined with other approaches. The group also discussed about the various “souls” of futures studies, and how some seem to want to prevail over others, and converged to the idea that the multidisciplinarity, both within futures studies and with other scientific areas, is essential to grasp the complexity of the futures and the challenges lying ahead of us.

Group 4 discussed horizon scanning and past projects and focused on the need of interaction, bringing together different organizations and groups to share their impressions of changes in the environment, and on the need to find long-term determinants of desirable futures in this area.

Group 5 discussed the balance of history and future, noting we can learn from both. The group also wondered to what extent we should rely on past data. They also agreed on the fact that some changes might not be understood by the public at large, or even by professionals, and that we should think about what to do with that. Because companies always want practical actions, the group also wondered how bringing the demand for practical action/decision and futures skills together to identify something new, thus being aware that foresight can help with that. Teaching futures literacy is important.

Group 6 reported that they had a flowing conversation, getting to know each other, with some common spots of interest. Main themes of discussions were the public sector at international and regional levels.

Group 7 started from a philosophical point of view, by wondering what starting point there can be for a common work. It converged on “language”, and on the importance of a common understanding. It would be good to work further on it, going out of the language of foresight literacy so that others understand.

Group 8 discussed the need of pursuing a common understanding of terminology; and of enforcing good communication of foresight on different stakeholders. Language and vocabulary from different fields can be mingled with foresight, in so far forging a more transdisciplinary mode of thinking and communicating not only as part of futures studies or of a foresight group but as practitioners coming together from different fields. This could be pursued through a workshop or a series of discussions, which would later be communicated to a larger public, and would allow for a “knowledge production”, academic language and nomenclature to be formed into a “common understanding”. A risk in this approach, however, could be a form of “reductionism”, yet the tradeoff would be greater access to foresight processes and ideas in the public.

Conclusions

The Foresight Europe Network is open to all foresight practitioners in Europe. The managing team aims to foster a sense of belonging to the network, especially by organizing opportunities like this meeting to meet and know other FEN members. In the same direction, one upcoming FEN activity is a meeting scheduled in fall 2021 (under definition), as well as the revision of the procedure to become FEN members, and the further updating of the FEN members webpage.

n Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability (AFWIC), Strategic Foresight and Futures Branch (2020), “Global Futures Report. Alternative Futures of Geopolitical Competition in a post-covid-19 world”, June, https://www.afwic. af.mil/Portals/72/Documents/AFWIC%20Global%20Futures%20Report_FINAL. pdf?ver=2020-06-18-124149-070 n Biodiversity Strategy to 2030: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/strategy/ biodiversity-strategy-2030_en n Environmental Action Program: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/strategy/ environment-action-programme-2030_en n European Environment Agency (EEA) of the European Union: https://www. eea.europa.eu/ n European Green Deal: https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/ european-green-deal_en n EEA State of the Environment report: https://www.eea.europa.eu/soer/2020 n FEN meeting keynote speakers presentations and Videos: https://feneu.org/ events-archive/ n Foresight Europe Network: https://feneu.org/ n Futures Conference 2021, “Learning Futures - Futures of Learning”: https:// futuresconference2021.com/ n Glenn, J.C. (2019), “Work/Tech 2050. Scenarios and Actions”, The Millennium Project, http://www.millennium-project.org/projects/workshops-on-future-ofworktechnology-2050-scenarios/ n Open Letter to support the establishment of a UN Office of Strategic Threats: http://www.millennium-project.org/open-letter-to-the-un-secretarygeneral-to-support-the-establishment-of-a-un-office-of-strategic-threats/ n Strategic Foresight for the EU: https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/strategicplanning/strategic-foresight_en n The Millennium Project: http://www.millennium-project.org/ n Transition from Artificial Narrow to Artificial General Intelligence Governance: http://www.millennium-project.org/transition-from-artificialnarrow-to-artificial-general-intelligence-governance/ n World Future Day 2021 by the Millennium Project: http://www. millennium-project.org/world-future-day-24-hour-round-the-worldconversion-on-the-future/