Technological advance affects almost all areas of human life. Rapid digitization, increased mobility, new biotechnologies, and nanotechnology deeply influence, amongst others, industrial production, entertainment, work, military affairs, and individual life. Besides overwhelmingly positive effects on wealth, comfort, innovation, and development, this also raises questions of unintended effects, of tensions with democracy, of the role of citizens, and of its sustainability facing environmental issues. Tools and procedures are needed to cope with this challenging situation. Technology assessment (TA) has been developed more than fifty years ago to enable science, the economy, and society to harvest the potential of new technology to the maximum extent possible and to deal responsibly with possible adverse effects. It was developed more than 50 years ago in the U.S. Congress and has diversified considerably in the meantime. Parliamentary TA in many European states and at the international level, participatory TA at the local and regional levels worldwide, and TA as part of engineering processes are the most relevant fields today. Technology assessment is a growing field of interdisciplinary research and scientific policy advice. This volume (a) gives an overview of motivations of TA, its history and its current practices, (b) develops a fresh theoretical perspective on TA rooted in social theory and philosophy, and (c) draws conclusions from the theoretical perspective for the further development of TA’s practices. It provides the first comprehensive view on the growing field of TA at the international level.

Papers presented at the Conference on Technology Assessment: Estimating the Future, UCLA, September 5-6, 1990.

The perspectives of technologists, economists, and policymakers are brought together in this volume. It includes chapters dealing with approaches to assessment of technology leadership in the United States and Japan, an evaluation of future impacts of eroding U.S. technological preeminence, an analysis of the changing nature of technology-based global competition, and a discussion of policy options for the United States.

How gender analysis should inform technology assessment.

Technology Assessment processes can be taken as a paradigm for interdisciplinary research. It is expected that interdisciplinary Technology Assessment is able to find solutions for actual sociopolitical problems that go beyond those expectable from one individual scientific discipline alone. The common notion that for tasks like this different disciplinary perspectives should be brought together confronts the fact that there is no common notion on how interdisciplinary research should be done. In the present volume of the series "Wissenschaftsethik und Technikfolgenbeurteilung" European experts of Technology Assessment present their perspectives on interdisciplinary research. They focus on methodology, policy consulting, and participation of stakeholders, laypersons and citizens or present concrete case studies concerning climate change and health care. Each contribution is commented by an other scientist. The result is a discussion-like examination of the connection between interdisciplinarity and the main subjects of Technology Assessment. This makes the book worth reading not only for experts in interdisciplinary research and policy consulting, but also for those who are interested in the ongoing discussion about methodology in European Technology Assessment.

This volume offers an expansion of ideas presented at a recent conference convened to identify the major strategies and more promising practices for assessing technology. The authors -- representing government, business, and university sectors -- helped to set the boundaries of present technology assessment by offering perspectives from computer science, cognitive and military psychology, and education. Their work explores both the use of techniques to assess technology and the use of technology to facilitate the assessment process. The book's main purpose is to portray the state of the art in technology assessment and to provide conceptual options to help readers understand the power of technology. Technological innovation will continue to develop its own standards of practice and effectiveness. To the extent that these practices are empirically based, designers, supporters, and consumers will be given better information for their decisions.