The mid-1980s were a time in which the U.S. government devoted a large share of its technological resources to the military sector while the growing dominance of Japanese consumer technology led Americans to worry about the future of U.S. industry.  This was also an era of increasing concern about technological risk, concern that was underlined by the Challenger disaster, Chernobyl, and Bhopal.  The fourth edition of Technology and the Future mirrored many of these issues, in a chapter on risk and in the addition of a fourth section headed "using technology" that dealt with technological innovation, military research, and commercial biotechnology.

Introduction

1.  Thinking about Technology

Introduction

Visions
    Robert S. Morison

Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?
    Alvin M. Weinberg

The Technological Society
    Jacques Ellul

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
    Robert M. Pirsig

The Third Wave
    Alvin Toffler

The Role of Technology in Society
    Emmanuel G. Mesthene

Technology:  The Opiate of the Intellectuals
    John McDermott

Technology and the Tragic View
    Samuel C. Florman

2.  Forecasting, Assessing and Controlling Technology

Introduction

Forecasts of Some Technological and Scientific Developments and Their Societal Consequences
    Theodore J. Gordon and Robert H. Ament

Technology and the Limits to Growth
    Donella H. Meadows, et al.

The Global 2000 Report to the President
    Council on Environmental Quality and Department of State

The Resourceful Earth
    Julian L. Simon and Herman Kahn

An Introduction to Technology Assessment
    Alan L. Porter, et al.

New Technology:  Predicting Its Impact
    Peter F. Drucker

Choosing Our Pleasures and Our Poisons:  Risk Assessment in the 1980s
    William W. Lowrance

Controlling Technology
    Allan Mazur

3.  Reshaping Technology

Introduction

Buddhist Economics
    E. F. Schumacher

Can Technology Be Humane?
    Paul Goodman

A Modest Proposal
    John Todd

The Political Philosophy of Alternative Technology
    Langdon Winner

4.  Using Technology

Introduction

Technological Innovation:  Agent of Growth and Change
    Christopher T. Hill

Winning Through Sophistication: How to Meet the Soviet Military Challenge
    William J. Perry and Cynthia A. Roberts

Commercial Biotechnology:  An International Analysis
    Office of Technology Assessment

About the Authors
 

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