Following the three FORGING workshops on Digital Twins, Cybersecurity and Bio-inspired materials which took place in Brussels  on 10, 11 and 12th of May, two other workshops have been organised on Human-machine-interaction and Energy efficiency on the 1st and 2nd of June, 2023.

This was the opportunity to bring together experts of various backgrounds – technology, social sciences and humanities, research, industry, associations, entrepreneurs – and gather them in co-creation modus to discuss the future of tomorrow.

Key take-aways: 

  • There are already many signals which point towards a technology-driven future
  • The environmental challenges (e.g. climate change) we are facing very strongly influence choices made on political, societal and economic level
  • When imagining the society in 2050, it can be expected that there will be strong differences between Europe and other parts of the world – because global challenges are affecting each country/region differently and technology solutions will have very diverse impact

The scenario workshops are a first step in the overall co-creation process FORGING is setting up where European experts exchange knowledge and ideas which could result in innovative processes, products and solutions. The objective of FORGING being to foster technology innovation with positive impact on society and without negative spillovers on the environment.

Thanks to their different profiles and background, experts could work together to create and imagine possible future scenarios reflecting the human, societal and environmental impacts of these two technologies.

The workshops were organised in the same format and structure as the workshops in May, including a short introduction/ presentation on the method of the workshop on the first day, and on the second day, experts joined their expertise group – Human Machine Interaction – Energy Efficiency – and inside each thematic they were split up into several moderated discussion groups (continued growth, collapse, discipline and technological transformation), each chaired by FORGING expert moderators.