ABSTRACT

Technology assessment is, according to its history, neither a scientific discipline nor a field of mere practice. Rather, its very core consists of a specific relationship between practice and theory which expresses itself in the technology assessment process. The story of technology assessment to be unfolded in this book represents the idea that technology assessment has been developed to meet societal challenges in the context of scientific and technological advances. This chapter presents a preliminary understanding of technology assessment for identifying its fields of practice, sets benchmarks and goals for theorizing technology assessment, and sketches how to get from observations at the level of technology assessment’s practice to ideas about its theory.