Abstract: Technology assessment (TA) is a relatively new concept with a heterogeneous "community" of practitioners and advocates. Consequently, there is much confusion about the new analytic strategy. Many people, for example, confuse TA with other technology studies such as engineering feasibility, market research, clinical trials, cost-benefit, environmental impact, technology forecasting, or technology transfer. This article-which draws most of its examples from the field of health-attempts to allay the confusion by showing how TA differs significantly from other technology studies and by articulating both the opportunities and obstacles involved in conducting comprehensive assessments. Using a question and answer format, the paper focuses on six facets of TA: 1) What is technology assessment? 2) Why is technology assessment needed? 3) How do comprehensive TA's differ from other technology studies? 4) What are the differences among evolving TA prototypes? 5) What comprehensive TA's have been done in health/medicine? 6) What are the limitations of the state of the art of TA?

Abstract: This book - inspired by the ILO World Employment Conference in 1976 - suggests new criteria for establishing socially oriented technology policies in the developing countries and demonstrates how technology can be directly related to the fundamental objective of satisfying basic human needs. In this new edition account is taken of the deliberations of the 1979 United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development, and the list of institutions dealing with appropriate technology has been updated.

Abstract: Technology is a sustaining power of human life and has a potency that extends beyond itself. Recognition of its radical force, shaping both life and culture, is often the occasion for turning it into an explanatory principle of history. However, technology only attains historical standing because, as well as acting upon other factors in society, it is acted upon by them in turn. In short, technology exists in a context, which includes ideology and which may undermine the claims of technological determinism. This context can be elucidated by contrasting present-day mass society with a tribal organization of society. Central to this is an examination of the way in which ideology and myth differ in their use of language, their impact on the community, and their treatment of special interests. These two radically different forms of human consciousness pose the question of whether to interpret nature and human actions in naturalistic or nonnaturalistic terms.

Abstract: The impact of technology on society includes not only the physical effects of devices and procedures but the influences these artifacts have on values and the way man comprehends life's experiences In a sense, a study of the effects of technology is implicit in every baccalaureate curriculum, but unfortunately the obligation for such study is so diffuse that it is no obligation at all The social unrest of the last decade has shown, and recent events continue to show, that the American public remains ignorant of the full significance of technology If one purpose of education is to help students under stand the world in which they live, then there is a need for explicit study of the cultural impact of technology Such a study includes (1) basic technological concepts that govern the operation of devices and procedures; (2) the technological method that casts human needs as technological problems and creates devices and procedures to meet these needs; and (3) the impact technology has on cultural norms and values A course that systematically covered these com ponents might be titled General Education in Technology Efforts to study the cultural impact of technology have a pecu liarly cyclic and humbling character Generations of writers, re sponding to various contemporary events, have studied the subject; anyone beginning research on it now will quickly discover a wealth of first-rate scholarship Nonetheless, I believe this subject as a proper concern for general education and the need to study it will exist as long as technological change continues Teachers have an explicit obligation to examine the complex relationships between technology and society and to define what is knowable Once created, such knowledge must be distilled and ordered into forms that can be transmitted If we fail to undertake this process, our concerns about technology and society remain little more than commentary which, while valuable, is no substitute for scholarship