Quantitative analysis of technology futures. Part I: Techniques, contexts, and organizations

As a gentle introduction to quantitative foresight techniques we begin by providing a working definition of future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) and discussing its role, uses, and popularity over recent decades. We select 22 FTA techniques identified as the most important quantitative FTA techniques. We introduce these techniques, discuss their main contexts and uses and classify them into groups with common characteristics, positioning them along four key dimensions: descriptive / prescriptive; extrapolative / normative; data gathering / inference; and forecasting / foresight.Peer reviewe