IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2017 - 73

knowledge, and action-guiding knowledge [8]. Shaping
nanotechnologies towards a vision statement implies
that prospective knowledge on the sustainability effects
of production, use, and disposal of nanotechnologies
has to be made available in order to support decisionmaking. If LCA is to contribute to shaping nanotechnologies to increase sustainability, it has to be prospective
and include factors of health and environmental implications, consumer and production patterns, future developments of lifestyles and markets, and political and
economic framework conditions for the later use of new
technologies. These are only few examples of future
aspects that need to be known in advance in order to
perform reliable life cycle analyses for supporting sustainability assessments.
Future technology assessment involves analyzing
value dimensions and contributes to constructive
debates on normative issues involved in nanotechnology advancement. In this process we need to consider
high uncertainty, diverse evaluation criteria reflecting a
normative framework, prediction challenges, and a comprehensive systemic view.

Different Approaches for Assessing
Emerging Technologies
For the past four decades the TA community has developed an entire family of approaches. Over the last 20
years, various attempts have been made to bring those
approaches together with research in sustainability
and innovation studies and to apply these approaches
to emerging technologies. In this regard, concepts
were developed based on earlier insights from
research on the impacts of technology on society, the
social shaping of technology, and incremental decision-making, attempting to find ways to improve the
social robustness of technology [9]. Among the most
prominent recent examples is constructive technology
assessment (CTA) [10], [11]. CTA was developed in the
Netherlands and adopted or adapted in a variety of
other European countries. Another example is realtime technology assessment (RTTA) [12]. Both CTA and
RTTA are built on elements like reflexivity, learning
and deliberation, and vision statement or Leitbilder.
There are three prominent prospective approaches
to emerging technology assessment:
■ Technology Characterization - Prospective as sessment of technologies (i.e., their functionalities)
with respect to opportunities and hazards, by focusing on the technology itself (Table 2).
■ Eco-Profiles - Evaluation of eco- and resource-efficient potential by applying life cycle assessment
methods (extrapolating) of typical applications and
comparing them to existing products and processes
(Table 2).
march 2017

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■

Proving the Orientation and Direction via Vision Statements ("Leitbilder") - Influencing the development of
technologies, processes, and products through discursive explication of existing Leitbilder that integrate aspects of health, safety, and environment
(Table 2).

Future technology assessment
involves analyzing value dimensions
and contributes to constructive
debates on normative issues involved
in nanotechnology advancement.

Considering the different steps of technology development presented by Rocco [14], we can determine
which emerging technology assessment approach is
useful for which step (Figure 1). As seen in Table 2, the
vision statement method is suitable for all three steps.
The methods of technology characterization and life
cycle analysis of the technology have been used less
frequently in assessing the emerging technologies for
two reasons:
1) Technology characterization and LCA require lots
of details, and such details are usually not available
for emerging technologies, and
2) These two methods focus mainly on current technologies rather than on emerging technologies.

TABLE 1. Different Concepts Addressing what
May Be Rationally Expected for the Future
(Self-Compilation).
Issues

Agent

■ Plain speculation about effects of

ambiguous

nanotechnology
■ Potential effects that have some

Probability

(albeit unquantifiable) probability
■ Scenarios for possible futures

Uncertainty

resulting from a systematic
foresight process
■ developments that could be

Certainty

expected to come into reality for
good reasons

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