scope:

Preface

VDI guidelines are intended to outline current and future developments in technology. "Among other things, they make forward-looking recommendation and give criteria for evaluation and assessment. They essentially deal with topics whose development has not yet come to a conclusion." (VDI Guideline 1000)

Technology assessment (including its subdiscipline, technology impact analysis) is one of those areas that calls for forward-looking recommendations. These should promote an appreciation of the problem of the extent to which technology can be shaped, so that new technological developments are responsibly justifiable and acceptable.

For the purpose of this Guideline, technology encompasses:

• the set of use-oriented, artificial, concrete objects (artefacts or object systems),
• the set of human actions and institutions in which object systems originate,
• the set of human activities in which object systems are utilised.

Technology assessment therefore refers not only to concrete object systems but also to the conditions and impacts of their origin and utilisation.

The target group of this Guideline includes all responsible and affected parties in the sciences, society and politics who are involved in decisions regarding technological developments and who deal with shaping their basic sociocultural conditions. In particular, this includes engineers, scientists, planners, and managers who evaluatively shape new technological developments.

The purpose of this Guideline is to convey to stakeholders a common understanding of terminology, methods, and value domains. The Guideline is intended to enable them to make well-founded decisions based on systematic analysis of goals, values, and action alternatives. The exposition presented here on values in technical action and on methods and institutions of technology assessment make no claims to provide instant prescriptions for how the task of a specific technology assessment is to be clearly carried out. Rather, they supply terminological clarifications and theoretical bases for the discussion on technology assessment.