Historical Review of the Development of Future-Oriented Technology Analysis

Abstract

The origin of the term ‘future-oriented technology analysis’ can be traced to the planning for the IPTS Seminar ‘New Horizons and Challenges for Future-oriented Technology Analysis: New Technology Foresight, Forecasting and Assessment Methods’ held in Seville, Spain in May 2004 (IPTS 2004). In the run-up to this seminar the Planning Committee prepared a preliminary paper to stimulate the potential participants to select topics on which to present papers and posters. This paper was entitled ‘Technology Futures Analysis: Toward Integration of the Field and New Methods’ (Technology Futures Analysis Methods Working Group, 2004). The paper introduced what it called an umbrella concept to encompass the wide variety of technology-oriented forecasting methods and practices, namely, Technology Futures Analysis (TFA). It is interesting that between that point and the actual semi-nar, a subtle, but crucial change took place in that TFA became FTA. The essence of that change was that ‘technology-oriented’ gave way to ‘futures-oriented’. This indicated that the focus of the seminar would be clearly on the future and ways to develop useful information for shaping the future. The preparatory paper itself fos-tered the change in focus as it developed a series of challenging questions about the field of analysis of possible and desirable futures” (Scapolo 2005).The objective of the Seminar was to analyse possible overlapping fields of prac-tice among technology foresight, forecasting, intelligence, roadmapping, and assessment. The diversity among these disciplines reflects the complexity of demands for FTA relating to differences in scope (geographic scale and time hori-zon), relationship to decision making, the extent of participation, the purpose of the analysis (awareness raising, envisioning, consensus building, corporate technology planning, etc), and the reliability of source information.To understand the power of the umbrella term of FTA, it is necessary to examine the nature and historical development of each of the component concepts.