Abstract

At the end of the post-war economic boom in the late 1960s, a new paradigm of futures studies emerged in “western” nations and institutions. Following an era which saw a broad, albeit ambivalent, influx of cybernetic planning discourses and a euphoria for growth and science, undesired and unplanned consequences of scientific and economic expansion were now chiefly problematized. This article traces the discourse of Technology Assessment (TA), a political and scientific process in development to “foresee” harmful effects on environments, societies, and economies. It soon proved to be a field of action for both politicians who valued it as a means of technology control, and for experts of futurology to reappraise their methods under new auspices. TA and its scientific and institutional legacy in the present relate to the ongoing debate about the Anthropocene. While TA is in its essence oriented towards a progressive and positivistic outlook on the future and knowledge thereof, the Anthropocene discourse has similar origins in futures semantics found in the 1970s. Both concepts should be historicized in regard to their scientific and political contexts.