Technology assessment and the social and human impact of innovation

ABSTRACT

Each day brings technological innovations in fields such as energy, biotechnology, and data security. Many of them will make a global impact, yet we do not know in what ways they will help or endanger us. Technology assessment (TA) attempts to foresee the social and human impacts of innovations. Globalization, information technology, and new management tools offer possibilities for better assessments. Virtual teams, dispersed across the world, could produce collaborative assessments. Diverse actors could engage in TA: governments, companies, international agencies, and research parks. This article highlights the new context and prospects for assessment, identifies the obstacles to effective assessment, and presents policy recommendations and challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• Efficacy
• risk
• safety
• social impact
• technology assessment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Federation of American Scientists keeps a complete archive of OTA’s reports at ota.fas.org.

2. In 1983 alone, more than 100 visitors from 25 countries traveled to Washington to learn about the agency and its work (Burnham 1984).

3. President Bill Clinton unforgettably dubbed it the “Contract on America.”

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the World Technopolis Association, with funding from Daejeon Metropolitan City.

Notes on contributors

Fred Young Phillips

Fred Young Phillips is a distinguished professor at Yuan Ze University in Taiwan, and a visiting professor at SUNY Stony Brook. He is editor in chief of Elsevier’s Technological Forecasting and Social Change. He is a fellow of the IC² Institute of the University of Texas at Austin, and of PICMET, the Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology. He was a signatory to the launch of UNESCO’s Global Innovation Forum.

Deog-Seong Oh

Deog-Seong Oh is the president of Chungnam National University in the Republic of Korea, and secretary general of the World Technopolis Association – representing science parks in 50 developing nations. He is a member of the UNESCO High Panel on Science for Development, and Organizing Committee Chair for UNESCO’s Global Innovation Forum. He is editor in chief of Asian Pacific Planning Review and World Technopolis Review. He has been special advisor to the Republic of Korea’s Presidential Committee on National Balanced Development, and directed the master plan for the Daedeok research and development district.