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Technology forecasting
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Technology forecasting
Technology forecasting attempts to predict the future characteristics of useful technological machines, procedures or techniques. Researchers create technology forecasts based on past experience and current technological developments. Like other forecasts, technology forecasting can be helpful for both public and private organizations to make smart decisions. By analyzing future opportunities and threats, the forecaster can improve decisions in order to achieve maximum benefits.
Today, most countries are experiencing huge social and economic changes, which heavily rely on technology development. By analyzing these changes, government and economic institutions could make plans for future developments. However, not all historical data can be used for technology forecasting, forecasters also need to adopt advanced technology and quantitative modeling from experts’ researches and conclusions.
Technology forecasting has existed more than a century, but it developed to an established subject until World War II, because American government started to detect the technology development trend related to military area after the war. In 1945, the U.S. Army Air Forces created a report called Toward New Horizons, which surveyed the technology development and discussed the importance for future studies. The report is an indication for the beginning of modern technology forecasting.
In the 1950s and 1960s, RAND Corporation developed the Delphi Technique and were widely accepted and used to make smart evaluation for the future. The applications of Delphi Technique are a turning point in the history of technology forecasting, because it became an efficient tool for knowledge building and decision-making, especially for social policy and public health issues.
In the 1970s, private sector and government agencies out of military area widely adopted technology forecasting and helped to diversify the users and applications. As the developments of computing technology, advanced computer hardware and software facilitates the process of data sorting and data analysis. The development of Internet and networking is also beneficial for the data access and data transfer. Technology opportunities analysis started since 1990. Improved software can help analysts search and retrieve data information from large complicated database and then graphically represents interrelations.
From 2000, more and more new requirements and challenges lead to the modern development of technology forecasting, such as alternate reality games, online forecasting communities and obsolescence forecasting.
"I think we have a cultural affinity for technology that reflects optimism, but we all make poor forecasts." — Jim Moore, director of the Transportation Engineering Program at the University of Southern California
Primarily, a technological forecast deals with the characteristics of technology, such as levels of technical performance, like speed of a military aircraft, the power in watts of a particular future engine, the accuracy or precision of a measuring instrument, the number of transistors in a chip in the year 2015, etc. The forecast does not have to state how these characteristics will be achieved.
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Technology forecasting
Technology forecasting attempts to predict the future characteristics of useful technological machines, procedures or techniques. Researchers create technology forecasts based on past experience and current technological developments. Like other forecasts, technology forecasting can be helpful for both public and private organizations to make smart decisions. By analyzing future opportunities and threats, the forecaster can improve decisions in order to achieve maximum benefits.
Today, most countries are experiencing huge social and economic changes, which heavily rely on technology development. By analyzing these changes, government and economic institutions could make plans for future developments. However, not all historical data can be used for technology forecasting, forecasters also need to adopt advanced technology and quantitative modeling from experts’ researches and conclusions.
Technology forecasting has existed more than a century, but it developed to an established subject until World War II, because American government started to detect the technology development trend related to military area after the war. In 1945, the U.S. Army Air Forces created a report called Toward New Horizons, which surveyed the technology development and discussed the importance for future studies. The report is an indication for the beginning of modern technology forecasting.
In the 1950s and 1960s, RAND Corporation developed the Delphi Technique and were widely accepted and used to make smart evaluation for the future. The applications of Delphi Technique are a turning point in the history of technology forecasting, because it became an efficient tool for knowledge building and decision-making, especially for social policy and public health issues.
In the 1970s, private sector and government agencies out of military area widely adopted technology forecasting and helped to diversify the users and applications. As the developments of computing technology, advanced computer hardware and software facilitates the process of data sorting and data analysis. The development of Internet and networking is also beneficial for the data access and data transfer. Technology opportunities analysis started since 1990. Improved software can help analysts search and retrieve data information from large complicated database and then graphically represents interrelations.
From 2000, more and more new requirements and challenges lead to the modern development of technology forecasting, such as alternate reality games, online forecasting communities and obsolescence forecasting.
"I think we have a cultural affinity for technology that reflects optimism, but we all make poor forecasts." — Jim Moore, director of the Transportation Engineering Program at the University of Southern California
Primarily, a technological forecast deals with the characteristics of technology, such as levels of technical performance, like speed of a military aircraft, the power in watts of a particular future engine, the accuracy or precision of a measuring instrument, the number of transistors in a chip in the year 2015, etc. The forecast does not have to state how these characteristics will be achieved.