Technology assessment: an essentially political process

Accidents such as the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India, underline the need for technology assessment in developing countries, as well as in the industrialized ones. But many difficulties are involved in this relatively new activity, and technology assessment is not a magic formula that will prevent all adverse consequences of the applications of science and technology. Nor does it apply only to multinational corporations. The paper discusses this thorny problem and concludes that the best that can be expected from technology assessment is that it may help people to rethink their own value systems by revealing the costs of options open to them.