International perspectives on technology assessment

Abstract

Technology assessment (TA) has attracted worldwide attention, but at present TA means different things to different countries. In industrialized market economy countries, TA consists of policy studies that deal with the side effects of technology. In centrally planned economy countries, TA is considered another tool for social management of technology. For developing countries, TA is expected to help in selecting appropriate technologies for development. These different perspectives have significant implications not only in how TA is done differently in different countries, but also in how international and global TA can be done effectively.