3.1 Responsible choice for appropriate technology  (Page 3/11)

Appropriate technology

Thus, intermediate technology is appropriate in the sense that it reduces or eliminates the harmful impacts of moving too quickly from indigenous, labor intensive technology to high capital intensive technology. Technology that is appropriate to orderly, sustainable, and humane development …

• gives “special consideration…to context of use, including environmental, ethical, cultural, social, political, and economical aspects”;
• seeks simplicity as opposed to (manifest or latent) complexity;
• chooses decentralization because it is more orderly, sustainable, and human than authoritarian centralization;
• employs labor intensive as opposed to capital intensive strategies;
• addresses itself to the unique characteristics of the surrounding community
• This description of appropriate technology quotes directly from Wikipedia and from Schumacher. See below.

Capabilities or human development approach

The Capabilities Approach changes the way we view developing communities and their members, replacing the view of developing communities as beset with needs and deficiencies with the view that they are repositories of valuable capabilities. Humans should strive to shape and reshape the surrounding socio-technical system to bring about the exercise and expression of fundamental human capacities. According to Nussbaum, capabilities answer the question, “What is this person able to do or be?” Nussbaum and Sen characterize capabilities as “‘substantial freedoms,’ a set of (causally interrelated) opportunities to choose and act. [T]hey are not just abilities residing inside a person but also freedoms or opportunities created by a combination of personal abilities and the political, social, and economic environment.” The Capabilities Approach, thus, adds depth to appropriate technology by providing criteria for choice; a technology derives its “appropriateness” from how it resonates with basic human capabilities and more specifically by whether it provides “conversion factors” that transforms basic capabilities into active functionings.