Technologiefolgenabschätzung is German for “technology assessment”, literally the “assessment of the consequences of technology”.
It is the systematic attempt to find out what a technology does to society, the economy and the environment — ideally before it is everywhere and the consequences are hard to undo. Besides the question “does it work?”, it asks “what happens when it does?”: who benefits, who carries the risks, and which side effects nobody planned for.
Germany has institutionalised this: the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag (TAB) advises parliament, and the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at KIT researches it.
Posts in this category are opinion pieces in that spirit: looking at a technology, not only at how to use it, but at what it does to us.