Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Conduct a structured assessment of technology advancement and forecasting.
• Understand the different types of factors that affect technology advancement; and conversely understand the different ways in which technology growth affects aspects of our world including society, culture, politics, warfare, economics and scientific knowledge.
• Understand the role and contribution of engineers, inventors, science, and predecessors in the evolution of technology.
• Understand the lifecycle stages of technologies from precedents and conception to growth, maturation, senescence, and death.
• Understand theories of technology evolution including diversity, combinatorial evolution, modularity, recursiveness, phenomenology, causality, domains, re-domaining, structural deepening, internal replacement, continuities and discontinuities, and imagination.
• Describe the influences and role of technology evolution current and future warfare.
• Describe the interplay between technology evolution and the processes of systems engineering and the systems engineering lifecycle; including the implication of technology readiness and maturation and expected advances on engineering future system solutions.