Current Foresight Activities in Central Europe

During the early 1990s, technology foresight has become much more widerspread. First pioneered in the United States and later in Japan, it has now spread to continental Europe. One of the first engagements in modern national foresight occurred in the Netherlands. The task is to identify the areas of strategic research and the emerging geric technologies likely to yield the greatest socio-economic benefits. The decentralized foresight approaches are less holistic than elsewhere and are concerned with selected areas. In Germany, parallel approaches have been adopted for looking systematically into the longer-term future of science, technology, the economy, and society. In an era characterized by ever fiercer global economic competition, and with the burden of unifying two different science systems and over-stretched public expenditure budgets, the German governements on ferderal and state levels and indeed the public expenditure budgets, economic and social benefits from science in retur n to their investment. Decentralized types of foresight are also observed in Austria, whereas in Hungary the first attempts to arrive at a foresight program seem to be modelled after Bristish experiences.