Technology Assessment Approach Research Articles

Managing Technology in Society: The Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment

Part 1: The Constructive Technology Assessment Discourse: Technology Assessment and Reflexive Social Learning: observations from the Risk Field, Bryan Wynne (Constructive) Technology Assessment: An Economic Perspective, Luc Soete. Part 2: Steering Technology is Difficult but Possible: The Danish Wind-Turbine Story: Technical Solutions to Political Visions?, Ulrik Jorgensen and Peter Karnoe Steering Technology Development Through Computer-Aided Design, Gary Lee Downey Risk Analysis and Rival Technical Trajectories: Consumer Safety in Bread and Butter, Fred Steward. Part 3: Experiments with Social Learning: Learning About Learning in the Development of Biotechnology, Jaap Jelsma User Representations: Practices, Methods and Sociology, Madeleine Akrich Technologies as Social Experiments. The Construction and Implementation of a High-Tech Waste Disposal Site, Ralf Herbold Pollution Prevention, Cleaner Technologies and Industry, Arne Remmen. Part 4: Constructive Technology Assessment - The Case of Medical Technologies: Why the Development Process Should Be Part of Medical Technology Assessment: Examples from the Development of Medical Ultrasound, Ellen B. Koch Social Criteria in the Commercialization of Human Reproductive Technology, Vivien Walsh Decision Structures and Technology Diffusion: Technical and Therapeutic Trajectories for Diabetes Care, Thea Weijers. Part 5: Analysis of Possibilities for Change: Technological Conception and Adoption Network: Lessons for the CTA Practitioner, Michel Callon Firm Strategies and Technical Choices, Rod Coombs. Epilogue: Managing Technology in Society: Toward Constructive Technology Assessment, Arie Rip, Thomas J. Misa and Johan Schot Index.

The past and future of constructive technology assessment

Constructive technology assessment (CTA) is a member of the family of technology assessment approaches. developed in particular in the Netherlands and Denmark. CTA shifts the focus away from assessing impacts of new technologies to broadening design, development, and implementation processes. Explicit CTA has concentrated on dialogue among and early interaction with new actors. The idea has been taken up by actors other than governments (consumers, producers). CTA implies a modulation of ongoing technological developments, and an understanding of the dynamics of such modulation is used to identify and briefly discuss three generic strategies for CTA: technology forcing, strategic niche management, and loci for alignment. Modulation activities are to be located in the broader issue of how our societies handle new technology at all. The established division of labor between promotion and control should be mitigated by sociotechnical criticism. This underlines the need for reflection on role and value profile of CTA agents.

Technikfolgen-Abschätzung der Gentechnologie Auf dem Wege zu einem rationalen Diskurs

The aim of technology assessment (TA) is the extensive examination of a new technology in order to estimate the impacts of applications and further developments. In the United States of America the Office for Technology Assessment (OTA) was founded in 1973 to support the legislative in its decision-making on science and technology policy. Institutions for technology assessment which are linked to the the legislative or the executive are also realized in Europe. An increasing number of private institutions or universities are performing technology assessment or research particularly on technology impacts which are relevant for legislation and decisions in technology policy. However the institutional link between technology impact research and the process of the political decision-making needs to be optimized. A new form of TA which allows the participation of the public in the technology debate is realized in Denmark by the consensus conferences. Equally, the so-called participative TA-procedure allows the integration of scientific and political argumention for technology assessment. In this report aims and approaches of technology assessment are characterized. Reasons for the controversy about gene technology and the approach to a rational debate outlined by TA are discussed. The clear distinction between the impacts of a technology and the goals of its application is required. Then it can be derived which technical alternative is optimal to reach the societal aims. The methods of TA have to be further developed. Because TA offers the frame for a technology debate, which combines scientific and democratic principles in the desicion-making, it may become an important tool to link science, society and politics.

Medical Technology Assessment as an Administrative Instrument: Can it be Useful for Decision Support on a Local Basis?

The broad perspective and synthetic approach of technology assessment raises the question whether the technology assessment model can be utilised for practical decision support. The idea is tested in the environment of local care decision making. Technology assessment‐like management instruments for assisting goal formulation, enhancement of organisational efficiency and quality assurance are presented.

Critical heuristics of social systems design

Health care planning, city and regional planning, energy and transportation planning, environmental design and other areas of social systems design are becoming issues of increasing concern to policy makers. Faced with complex steering problems that may have far-reaching societal implications, they except help from applied disciplines such as Operational Research, systems science, technology assessment, program evaluation, cost-effectiveness analysis, and similar approaches to scientifically informed planning. But these approaches offer little help in critically reflecting on the normative implications of the problem definitions and solution proposals they inspire. Critical Heuristics seeks to provide both the involved planners and affected citizens with a conceptual framework for identifying and discussing the normative implications of problem definitions, systems designs, program evaluations, etc. The paper introduces some key concepts of Critical Heuristics and briefly discusses their significance to ‘rational’ planning.

Forecasting the Telephone: A Retrospective Technology Assessment

This book applies the approach of technology assessment to the telephone. The author's analysis forecasts the effect of the telephone on society and compares it with the reality. This book not only examines the social consequences of the telephone, but provides a model for future efficient assessments of new technologies. It documents a largely unknown piece of the history of American technology and anlayzes the requirements for success in technological forecasting.

ASPECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT IN A DEVELOPING PETROLEUM TRANSITION ERA

Australia is faced with the need to augment and replace rapidly depleting indigenous petroleum. Because there are many possible solutions and wide ranging impacts associated with this problem, the use of an evaluative technology assessment framework is proposed. The purpose is to provide a means whereby likely technical, socio-economic, legal and regulatory requirements and consequences of policy options can be canvassed and appraised. Factors influencing the credibility, usefulness and efficacy of such technology assessments are examined, and methodologies appropriate to one application, viz petroleum substitution, are explored. The energy sector is used primarily here, therefore, to exemplify the value of the technology assessment approach to policy making. A systems simulation and optimal resources allocation mode is used to illustrate planning procedures and to highlight such matters as innovation needs, resource requirements and societal changes.