Technology Assessment

Abstract

Technology assessment (TA) attempts to anticipate future development of technologies and projects and their possible impacts, and feed back the assessments to relevant decision arenas. Different approaches have evolved depending on the decision arena; private firms (‘picking the winners’ TA), sectors and government agencies (extended cost-benefit-risk TA as in medical and health care TA), government and representative bodies (public service TA, with the now defunct US Congressional Office of TA as the early example), and society in general (agenda-building TA). Recently, one sees combinations of analytic and participatory approaches (e.g., a background study linked to a consensus conference), and of private and public considerations (as in constructive TA). Methodological issues include the challenge of writing a history of the future (insights into the co-evolution of technology and society are important here); the knowledge-control dilemma; and the distance between promotors of new technology (often insiders) and contestants (often outsiders). TA has professionalized (with handbooks and courses) and is by now a publicly accepted activity. The fact of its institutionalization indicates how modern risk society is becoming reflexive. Uncertainties are not reduced by TA, but made managable.