Showing papers in "Technological Forecasting and Social Change in 1997"

TL;DR: Constructive technology assessment (CTA) is a member of the family of technology assessment approaches as mentioned in this paper, and it has been taken up by actors other than governments (consumers, producers).

TL;DR: The modeling framework used—simultaneous estimation for successive generations using a full information maximum likelihood procedure—demonstrates that, in most cases, the hypothesis of constant coefficients can be rejected.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss four paradigms of technology assessment: the classical paradigm, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) paradigm, public technology assessment; and constructive technology assessment.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated how a state government's role as both a sponsor and a diffuser of an innovation affect the adoption-diffusion process and found that the degree of state government involvement in innovation development is positively associated with diffusion.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors point out that the "practical man" and his "tacit knowledge" play a very central role in both product and process development, and that low technology will play a central role even in the future.

TL;DR: The work presented here constitutes a chapter in a forthcoming book by the same author entitled Conquering Uncerruinry, which uses the Voltera-Lotka equations to describe the competitive dynamics in a market niche occupied by two competitors.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors proposed a procedure for strategic technology scanning, an activity that has received insufficient attention in the literature to date, and called for involvement of all levels of the corporate hierarchy-from the corporate board to the technology analyst.

TL;DR: The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) as mentioned in this paper was established to serve the United States Congress, and Congress contributed uniquely to the technology assessment process as it was implemented by OTA.

TL;DR: Inference algorithms based on fuzzy relations are developed for a cross-impact model designed for a technology impact assessment that considers not only the direct impact but also the indirect impact.

TL;DR: In this article, four interdisciplinary teams of experts were brought together to provide insights into the modes and likelihoods of such intrusions as far as 10,000 years in the future.

TL;DR: In this article, a case study of an international agency for technical assistance illustrates the points made in sections 2 and 3: people in that organization spontaneously self-organized to form a learning system out of which a new strategic direction for their organization and governance emerged.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that in a competitive software market, in the presence of differential piracy and brand switching among the various brands within a software product category (e.g., spreadsheets), there may be no relationship between market estimates based on unit sales and the user base of a software brand.

TL;DR: In particular, the cost of a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging more rapid diffusion of energy efficient technologies is likely to be considerably smaller than would be suggested by the conventional economic models.

TL;DR: The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) as mentioned in this paper was established by statute in 1972, and during the ensuing 23 years, under the guidance of an equally bipartisan congressional Board, OTA evolved a structure and a process which provided analysis, information, and options to Congress and a reputation for nonpartisan, accurate and complete reporting.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the three great industrial revolutions of the last quarter of the present millennium and link the micro-level changes in firms, as the source of production behavior, with meso-level change in industrial structure and macro level changes in growth and development performance, and show that each industrial revolution possesses considerable internal logic but is less flexible in regard to adopting features of its successor.

TL;DR: The demise of the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was precipitated by larger political forces that in the end, despite a close fight, OTA was unable to withstand.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors point out that in the past technological change created more jobs in total than it destroyed, but this was not necessarily true in the future and that it may not be true even in the developed or developing countries.

TL;DR: Basic methods of reducing the number of possible combinations of factor values by removing futures containing incompatible factor value pairs are recapitulates, then probability and cross-impact measures are used to further eliminate improbable futures.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the impact of digital technology diffusion on the productivity of firms making up the local operating sector of the U.S. telecommunications industry for the years 1991 to 1993.

TL;DR: In the early 1970s, the concept of technology assessment arose in the United States in conjunction with other social movements of the era that promoted increased democracy and the apprlication of a wider set of values to public decision making as discussed by the authors.

TL;DR: It is posited that the increase in life expectancy is the product of a learning process to remove the accidents and obstacles on the way to the full life potential of an individual: longevity.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors point out that the capacity of society to absorb major changes in monetary mechanisms may, in fact, act as a brake on the uptake of technological change.

TL;DR: There are at least a half-dozen possibilities for reconstituting technology assessment that might be pursued, ranging from foundation-supported non-profit organizations to private consultancies, and a variety of government-supported entities.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe a package of new research techniques that have been developed to allow investigation of long-term global trends, based on the theory that expectations (of managers) intimately effect the macro-outcomes of aggregated individual actions.

TL;DR: In this article, a case study of the Nestucca oil spill in Canada only three months prior to the Exxon-Valdez disaster is used to uncover some systemic management principles for the better management of complex issues.