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.
Famous quotes containing the words technology and/or policy:
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“Maybe it’s understandable what a history of failures America’s foreign policy has been. We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners. Any prolonged examination of the U.S. government reveals foreign policy to be America’s miniature schnauzer—a noisy but small and useless part of the national household.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)