Assessing Technological Innovations: From Early Warning to the Governance of Socio-technical Transformations

Technology assessment (TA) is an interdisciplinary field of problem-oriented research generating knowledge primarily for decision-making processes in politics, economy, and society with regard to the opportunities, risks, and challenges of emerging technologies and socio-technical change. This chapter outlines the development of the field since its roots in the 1960s to date with a focus on Germany, the USA, and Europe. Based on a rough temporal division into three phases representing an expert-based, participatory, and pragmatic TA approach, respectively, we illustrate the field’s development by highlighting concrete projects and studies, reflecting on the (ever new) development of appropriate assessment methods and pointing to relevant thematic waves (“hype cycles”) of technology groups, such as energy, genetic, or information technologies. Finally, we discuss the impact and future challenges of TA given current socio-political trends and upcoming socio-technical transformations. We conclude that there is a clear need for new approaches of TA so that TA will remain a valuable instrument providing guidance in a complex and uncertain technological environment in the coming decades.