Appropriate Technology Movement

The underlying philosophy of the appropriate technology (AT) movement continues to be a provocative approach to directing development and studying technology. At the heart of the movement is the idea of technology choice: Alternative technologists assert that there are many possibilities for adopting technologies, each having a social consequence, and these possibilities must be evaluated in light of the long-range needs of the community where the technology will be used. One of the most provocative legacies of AT is the idea that any given technology is a manifestation of a particular cultural, social, and economic arrangement and a certain environment. These variables make the technology of one region unsuitable for direct implementation in another.

The movement was established in the early years of the Cold War, when the difficulty of industrialization was of critical importance. The struggle between the capitalist First World and the communist Second World for control over the developing Third World led to the effort to modernize economies through the transplantation of “inappropriate” technologies. Appropriate technologists deplored the fact that industrial development benefited only a few industrialists. Furthermore, the imported industrial processes ignored the local knowledge of the host country; because there was no corresponding research and development effort in the host country, the burgeoning industry would be dependent on the knowledge and support of the industrial exporters. What is more, these exported industries used raw materials available only in the exporting country, and even though the host country might have an available substitute, the resources of the host country were ignored because the country did not have technical experts who were able to adapt the industrial processes. These conditions meant that the developing countries lacked the capital, industrial infrastructure, and technical knowledge to become truly developed nations and instead became increasingly dependent despite their newly won independence from colonialism.

Although AT acknowledges its debt to Gandhi's program of satyagraha, most say the movement was born in 1965 as the Intermediate Technology Development Group Limited in London, founded by Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, George McRobie, and Julia Porter. Schumacher first promoted the idea of “intermediate technology” with his colleagues at an Oxford University conference in 1968 and brought the idea to a wider audience in his book Small Is Beautiful in 1973. The idea of an intermediate technology is one that is somewhere between the un- or underdeveloped state of the Third World and the highly advanced state of the First or Second World. Instead of deploying advanced technology as part of a program of international aid, Schumacher suggested a middle, intermediate step that would be more beneficial to the host country.

Schumacher was distressed by the large-scale institutionalized poverty in developing countries. Schumacher focused on villages or small regions for development, promoting labor-intensive methods with low capitalization in the hope that these would provide greater employment and benefit the overall population. Sharma and Quereshi discuss an example of this type of AT program; that is, the idea of modernizing India's paper production industry. A factory that creates paper completely by hand can produce 100 kg of paper per day, while factories in industrialized countries can make 500 metric tons per day. The decision of what to do for India can be discussed through the lens of AT by considering the availability of raw materials, finances, local knowledge, and time required to set up a factory.

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