Issue No. 3 / 2005 of "Technikfolgenabschätzung – Theorie und Praxis" with the thematic focus "Technology acceptance" published [07.12.2005]
The thematic focus of this issue is devoted to "Technology acceptance as a subject matter of scientific and political discussion" In the introduction the editors of this special focus, Fritz Gloede and Leonhard Hennen state that during the last four decades debates on science and technology policy have been constantly accompanied by discussions about technology acceptance. Without doubt surveys addressing acceptance of technologies have often played an important role in conflicts about technology.
The thematic focus aims at picking up questions concerning the scientific state-of-the-art and the political status of research on technology acceptance. In this issue we therefore present a broad range of different approaches of research on technology acceptance with contributions from Ernst Kistler, Helge Torgersen, Ortwin Renn, Peter M. Wiedemann / Johannes Mertens, Thomas Petermann / Constanze Scherz, Armin Grunwald, Tobias Haertel / Johannes Weyer, Eva-Maria Jakobs and Dorothee Menhart.
The majority of articles in the other segments of the journal are in German. In the following, only the English contributions are mentioned.
The Conference reports section contains one article in English: from June 1-3, the First Global Forum on City Tourism was held in Istanbul, focusing on designing and promoting competitive and sustainable urban destinations and discussing how to establish a conceptual framework for City Tourism Competitiveness. In the article, the shift from the traditional approach of tourism as an economic benefactor "to a sector that promotes the interest of tourists to experience the attraction with their senses together with the quest for being a partner, being emotionally linked to the values staged by a city or the place" (the so-called "value-for-effort approach"), is characterized.
In the ITAS-News section, two new EU projects: "WORKS " (Work Organisation and Restructuring in the Knowledge Society) and "Knowledge NBIC" (Knowledge Politics and New Converging Technologies: A Social Science Perspective) are presented, in which ITAS members will be involved. WORKS aims at resulting in important improvements in relation to the state-of-the-art in combining the analysis of restructuring and changes of work organisation with investigations in individual biographies and household dynamics and their institutional contexts of welfare systems. The implications for the use of skills and knowledge, for flexibility and for the quality of work as well as the impact on occupational identities, time use and learning of individuals will be investigated in a comparative perspective. The project started in June 2005 and will last until May 2009. The "Knowledge NBIC" project will start in January 2006, and for a duration of 30 months the patterns of knowledge production in the NBIC ("Nano-, Bio-, Info- and Cogno") fields of science and technology as well as the actual and potential use of and social resistance to such knowledge will be investigated.
Links:
- Contents of issue No. 3 of "Technikfolgenabschätzung – Theorie und Praxis" here
- The next issue (No. 1 / 2006) will focus on "biogenic transportation fuels".