Positioning Future-Oriented Technology Analysis

Over the last half century or so, various tools and techniques have been developed that seek to better anticipate and shape future technological developments. Some of these approaches, particularly early on, tended to be techno-determinist in their outlook, but more recently, a greater acknowledgement of the co-evolution of technology and society has led to the adoption of necessarily more complex perspectives. Some approaches have been purely quantitative, others purely qualitative, whilst a mix is often preferred. Some have involved only ‘experts’, whilst others have sought to initiate a societal dialogue. And some have sought to explore possible futures through extrapolation, whilst others have adopted a more normative stance, identifying targets and setting out action plans for achieving more desirable futures. In the remainder of this introductory chapter, we first outline work done around tracing the evolution of FTA and its essential characteristics. We then discuss the relationship between FTA and decision-making processes, an area where there exists much misunderstanding and misplaced expectations. Thereafter, we explicate some of the main challenges facing contemporary FTA, particularly around impacts and their assessment, while in a final section, we provide a summary of the chapters that follow.