The Prospects for Technology Assessment

Abstract

This paper is designed to draw attention to specific problems of Technology Assessment (TA) and to indicate the range of results that can reasonably be expected from this emergent procedure.¹ In doing this only the formal features are discussed. Their consideration is necessary and at the same time sufficient to elucidate the epistemological status of TA. The complementary material problems — which concern, for example, the “true needs” and the ideal of the good life, and also our responsibility towards future generations or towards nature — are not discussed here. Needless to say, the interest of TA is aroused by these concrete problems. In what follows they are referred to in an overall way, but their (controversial) details are not discussed, the underlying premise being that a metatheoretical analysis, as performed here, can contribute indirectly to a better understanding of these problems. By its very nature such an analysis has a double function. It demarcates a sort of safe ground — i.e., a sphere within which theoretically justified conditional assessments can be expected — and at the same time it excludes the problematic and unsafe area of dogmatic prescriptions.