Identifying critical technologies in the United States: A review of the federal effort

The United States government has not sponsored technology foresight as it has been defined and practised by governments in Europe, Japan and elsewhere in the world. (Foresight has been described in many places, but the original concept, as far as the authors are aware, was proposed by Martin and Irvine. Different approaches to identifying important technologies were summarized in an earlier paper.) Instead, the US government sponsored a parallel effort called ‘critical technologies identification’ between 1989 and 1999. This paper describes the critical technologies movement in the United States and explores why critical technologies identification was limited in its ability to capture the attention of US government officials and other decision-makers. The authors suggest possible alternative futures for foresight in the United States.