The Technology Foresight Possibility

Technology foresight has enjoyed world-wide attention and has experienced further application by many other countries following the first successful practice in Japan. Technology foresight calls for a good combination of the technology's developing laws and social needs. Based on these social needs and actual conditions while adhering to the inner logic of scientific development, it attempts to explore both medium and long term development orientation of science, helping the government to formulate its scientific development strategy as well as providing information of future technology growth for industries even the public in general.The present technology foresight research centers on practice, leaving its theoretical ground slightly inadequate. It is precisely this scarcity of in-depth study of its developing laws fills many experts and practitioners in this field with disappointment about the evaluation results of its implementation, and mostly they hold doubts about its accuracy and reliability.In view of the doubt concerning technology foresight, this paper is written in defense of the possibility of technology foresight from the perspective of technical development models. To get a deep understanding of it, clearly-defined knowledge of this technology is needed first. As is indicated from multi theoretical angles by the three technological development models, namely materialist model, cognitive model and social structure model, we get to know the history, formation, form and relation with the society of technology growth. And this paper aims to account for the possibility of technology foresight through the following steps:first, laying the theoretical foundation for technology foresight by means of analyses of technology development models; then, offering an answer to "possibility of technology foresight"; meanwhile, providing valid evidences based on cases in point; explaining "what made this technology feasible" by combining the approaches of technology foresight and technology models. Only when we are clear about the development laws of technology and their logic links with technology foresight can we be qualified to conduct more scientific technology foresight applications.