ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concepts of human values, the future, and technology and how they are interrelated in an impact assessment (IA). In the context of social decision making, IA should be seen as an aid to, not a substitute for, judgement. There is a vast literature on values. Sociologists, political scientists, economists, social psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, planners, engineers, futurists, and many others have contributed to this literature. Milton Rokeach has developed an elaborate network of definitions, a working schema, and a considerable amount of empirical data on the nature of human values. If a person "has a value", he or she has an enduring belief that a certain way of acting and a certain endstate of existence are personally and socially preferable to other ways of acting or end-states. A value is an imperative to action. There are two basic methods to determine the current value distribution: asking people what their values are and inferring values from people's behavior.
