Foundations of technometrics

Conventional indicators of technology fail to provide a direct measure of scientific or technological progress. This paper examines three explicit approaches to the measurement of technology: the Hedonic, the Rand, and the composite (wholistic and holistic). Looking at technology from within rather than from without, a theoretical framework for measurement—technometrics—is developed. The state-of-the-art is specified in terms of a surface of constant probability density given the distribution of technological characteristics. The latter, in turn, are specified as vectors in an n-dimensional space.