Technology Policy

The study of technology policy or engineering and policy is taught at multiple universities.

Classic political science teaches technology as a black box. Similarly economics treats technology as a residual to explain otherwise inexplicable growth. The creation of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy addressed the fact that policy can not treat all technologies as identical based on their social or economic variables. Technology policy is distinct from science studies but both claim Thomas Samuel Kuhn as a founder, while technology policy recognizes the importance of Vannevar Bush. Technology policy approaches science as the pursuit of verifiable or falsifiable hypotheses, while science studies has a post-modern view whereby science is belief-based and all truths are relative. Technology policy is rarely post-modern. Its goal is the improvement of policy and organizations based on an understanding of the underlying scientific and technological constraints and potential. For example, some clean coal technologies via carbon sequestration and the allocation of electromagnetic spectrum by auction are ideas that emerged from technology policy schools.