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  .  The best view of the future is through the eyes of younger scholars who are not yet committed to the view that the future is an evolutionary extension of the past. The work of these authors, selected competitively from a large number of candidates, addresses a variety of new issues from original perspectives. Many of the ideas they present will not find quick acceptance in the federal bureaucracy. They are explorations of how science and technology ought to reflect the consensus goals of society. The new perspective takes a more integrated view of policy for science and science for policy, recognizing that each is a driver of the other. Although the papers are organized into sections for policy, for science, for technology, and for the new genetics, this generation of scholars no longer wastes time fussing over the distinctions among these categories. Their view is as often global as it is domestic. Nor is there even a whiff of technological determinism in this writing. The outcomes of debates about policy are, in the authors’ views, clearly shaped by social, cultural, and political forces. But neither do the authors fall into the trap of social construction; both technical facts and gaps in knowledge command attention here. David Guston and Dan Sarewitz have made an important contribution to the health of science and technology policy studies in identifying and giving visibility to this group of up-and-coming scholars. In their work there are agendas for research that deserve support from both government funding agencies and foundations. Unfortunately, there are very few places where science and technology policy researchers, especially the younger generation of scholars, can find research support. The unintended consequence of this unfortunate situation is that the younger researchers are often looking to funded vii problem-solving projects outside academic support, with the result that their tendency to look at both theoretical constructs and practical ideas concurrently is reinforced. This conference is the second of its kind, to my knowledge, the first having taken place in Hawaii some years ago. It ought to become a periodic event, with both the conference and the publication of its papers supported by one or more foundations or federal agencies. So long as science and technology policy research has no institutional home in the United States, mechanisms to bring the younger investigators together occasionally are particularly important. viii Foreword ...

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