Appropriate technology
Also known as: intermediate technology
- 1Appropriate technology emphasizes small-scale and environmentally sustainable solutions.
- 2The movement was popularized by Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher.
- 3The seminal text defining this approach is titled Small Is Beautiful.
- 4Core characteristics include being affordable, labor-intensive, and locally autonomous.
- 5The philosophy promotes a people-centered approach to technological development.
Appropriate technology is a movement encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale, affordable by its users, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable, and locally autonomous.
Connections1
alternative technological movement often contrasted with neo-Luddism
While neo-Luddism often advocates for the rejection of modern technology, the appropriate technology movement seeks to design and implement small-scale, sustainable, and human-centered technological solutions.
Appropriate technology is a movement that advocates for the application of tools and systems that are small-scale, affordable, and locally autonomous. By prioritizing labor-intensive and energy-efficient solutions, the movement seeks to ensure that technological choices are environmentally sustainable and directly accessible to their users.
A schematic showing a cradle-to-cradle quad rollerskates concept. This concept would improve the manufacturing method and also makes the skates modulatable. This means that a same skate can be kept even as the foot grows as the person using the skate gets older. For this, the wheels and X-frame are kept, and a differe...Wikimedia Commons; KVDP; Own work; Public domain; Wikimedia Commons: Category:Appropriate technologySchematic of a roof made exclusively from cleaved bamboo stems. The picture was based on a schematic in the book SAS Survival Handbook by John Wiseman. Bamboo roofs as these are completely ecologic and organicly compostable (if not altered with chemical agents; eg against rotting).Wikimedia Commons; KVDP; Own work; Public domain; Wikimedia Commons: Category:Appropriate technologyThis shematic shows how a open-source communal washing machine can be build. The use of several small-capacity washing machines for a community increases cost; primarily because commercial washing machines are already expensive per piece and this is multiplied by the units purchased. Also, another feature of this mach...Wikimedia Commons; KVDP; Own work; Public domain; Wikimedia Commons: Category:Appropriate technology The concept was originally introduced as intermediate technology by the economist Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher. In his influential work, Small Is Beautiful, Schumacher argued for a shift toward people-centered development. Modern proponents continue to emphasize these values, focusing on technologies that empower individuals and communities rather than those that rely on centralized, high-cost industrial infrastructures.