Future assessment by metaphors

Technology assessment is confronted with a dilemma. On the one hand it needs a reliable basis for its predictions. Quite often this basis is delivered when prototypes of a new technology can be studied, but often technology assessment is started after a product has been placed on the market. At this time all the data are available, but very little can be changed and improved. Analysing the paradigms and metaphors used as orientation in the early stages of research and development is one approach for dealing with this problem. Technology assessment can use the resulting analyses to derive certain properties of a new technology and for an evaluation of impacts.