¹ Dr Frances Svensson, in a private communication.

² Genevieve, J. Knezo, ‘Technology Assessment: A Bibliographical Review’, Technology Assessment 1, 67.Google Scholar

³ The distinguished historian Lynn White, who is perhaps more accomplished in interpreting technology in cultural contexts than any living historian seems to be quite in accord with my views. He writes: “Systems analysts are caught in Descartes’s dualism between the measurable res extensa and the incommensurable res cogitans, but they lack his pineal gland to connect what he thought were two sorts of reality. In the long run the entire Cartesian assumption must be abandoned for recognition that quantity is only one of the qualities and that all decisions, including the quantitative, are inherently qualitative, [italics, mine: H.S.] That such a statement to some ears has an ominously Aristotelian ring does not automatically refute it.“

“There is a second present defect in the art of technology assessment: the lack of a sense of depth in time; this may be called the Hudson Institute syndrome. It is understandable not only because most social sciences that normally take a flat contemporary view of phenomena, but also because the concrete problems set before systems analysts for solution look toward future action and discourage probing the genesis of things.” (Lynn White, ‘Technology Assessment from the Stance of a Medieval Historian', The American Historian Review 74 91974),5.)