Future-related studies are key in identifying and predicting emerging technologies, fostering innovation, and driving scientific progress. Games have increasingly served as a tool to engage researchers in Technology Forecasting and Foresight activities, presenting a gamified approach to gather, analyze, and synthesize information to allow future foresight. In this work, we use the Rapid Review methodology to analyze the scientific literature and explore the use of games as tools for Technology Forecasting and Foresight. We analyzed and categorized the articles by theme and type of study, identifying the areas where games can be most beneficial to guide professionals performing Technology Forecasting and Foresight, helping companies and governments better understand the future. The empirical evidence found provides a comprehensive understanding of how games can enhance foresight activities and contribute to the success of Technology Forecasting and Foresight initiatives. Our analysis also provides insights for future research about gamified strategies in Foresight.

Recent Artificial Intelligence advancements raise concerns about the future of work, particularly technological unemployment. Studies show automation's impact, but tools like ChatGPT disrupt even traditionally secure professions like programming. In this study, we reevaluate AI's effects using a method to assess the impact of Generative AI technologies on occupations to understand the potential effects of Generative AI systems on software development work. Valuable insights were obtained by gathering the view of a group of workers, primarily composed of developers who are starting their careers, regarding the impact of these technologies on the tasks they perform to provide a comprehensive understanding of the implications of Generative AI for software development. Results show that all programming tasks performed by these workers would experience some impact by Generative AI -65% of the tasks being considerably impacted, 12% moderately impacted, and 18% minimally impacted. This analysis highlights the substantial influence of Generative AI technologies on software development, mainly affecting those in the early stages of their career. The results of this work contribute to the academic community with valuable information. Policymakers can also use this information, as this work provides a comprehensive view of the impacts of Generative AI on software developers, considering their direct impact on job tasks.

Healthcare practitioners are professionals with highly specialized knowledge leaving a vast gap between them and their patients. Mobile Health applications may provide a fast and precise diagnosis to patients through expert systems and chatbots. We surveyed and classified Mobile Health apps, discussing their advantages, such as lower costs and replicability. However, most technologies lack the common sense and creativity to solve individual cases, and their precision is far from that of humans. Mobile Health is a relatively new field, and new technologies will be developed in the future, changing the current balance in favor of machines but not replacing healthcare professionals completely. This trend should be watched closely by those interested in healthcare, given its potential for the improvement of patient treatment and also their capacity to disrupt healthcare professionals’ formation and work. Therefore, this work contributes to understanding the capabilities and limitations of mHealth apps in providing medical diagnosis and treatment.

Shopping tools are widely used by millions of users to find the best deals in different marketplaces worldwide. In this work, we introduce the concept of crowdsourced deals, which refers to deals found and shared by a crowd of potential consumers. We analyze various crowdsourced deal tools and highlight their features. By formalizing collaboration in certain types of bargain-hunting tools, we can develop new techniques to improve the user experience and attract more contributors to maintain an active and stable community. Understanding the concept of crowdsourced deals can also benefit organizations looking to increase their sales and analyze their online reputation. Bargain-hunting tools provide a form of marketing that we can refer to as online word-of-mouth advertising, which is crucial in today’s consumer society, similar to well-known word-of-mouth advertising.

In the process of creating a Technological Roadmap, a large amount of data must be analyzed, and future events may be spread across several document databases, making it harder to researchers retrieve all future events described in these publications in a timely fashion. Technology Roadmapping is a time-consuming and error-prone method that usually requires a group of experts to be properly executed. This work presents NERMAP, a collaborative system capable of semiautomating the Technology Roadmapping process, through the Named Entity Recognition method. The evaluation showed that NERMAP is capable of retrieving up to 83% of future events in documents. Furthermore, the system was also able to identify some future events that our validation team missed. By using the system, researchers can perform the analysis in considerably less time, thus reducing costs. Therefore, the proposed system enables a small group of researchers to analyze a large number of documents in a short time, streamlining their ability to identify, process, and analyze information in the form of roadmaps.