Toward an Assessment of Technology Gaming

Abstract : The questions I was asked to address were: What are the acknowledged limitations of traditional technology forecasting and other methods of assessing the future? Which of these limitations might technology gaming overcome? Because I had difficulty thinking about those questions, I have rephrased them as follows: What is it that technology gaming hopes to accomplish? How does it compare with other methods of doing the same or similar things? In the Pace/ Moran article in the Naval Engineering Journal, technology gaming is described as a means of guiding decisions relating to the investment of Department of Defense research and development resources. As my point of reference, I will discuss technology gaming in the more restrictive sense that it was used in the Technology Initiatives Game in 1988 (TIG-88). Here I would claim it was focused (within the research and development resources) specifically on the technology base investments--that is, on basic research (DoD budget category 6.1) and exploratory development (6.2). My reasoning here is that the time frame (2010 and beyond) puts it beyond the concerns of advanced exploratory development (6. 3A). (SDW)