Constructive Technology Assessment
Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA) is an approach to assessing technology that seeks to influence its design and development, not merely to forecast its impacts after the fact. By broadening the design process to feed societal aspects back to engineers and decision-makers early—while the technology is still malleable—CTA aims to manage the co-evolution of technology and society and to soften the Collingridge dilemma, the bind in which a technology's effects are easy to change before they are known and hard to change once they are.
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Sources
- Schot, J., & Rip, A. (1997). The past and future of constructive technology assessment. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 54(2-3), 251-268. DOI: 10.1016/S0040-1625(96)00180-1 ↗
- Rip, A., Misa, T. J., & Schot, J. (Eds.). (1995). Managing Technology in Society: The Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment. Pinter Publishers. ISBN: 9781855672567
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA). ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/science-technology-studies/constructive-technology-assessment
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