From rainbow – hippie tech zine on appropriate technology, read at the Berkeley Museum Fisher Family Art Lab:
“The development and demand for “appropriate technologies” today arise from the realization that our resource conditions are changing and that our present ways of doing things are inappropriate for the futures we face.
They arise also from a realization that our present technologies serve ends which threaten the fundamental values of our society and new ways of doing things must be developed which support and evoke those values.
Appropriate technology demands that we ask, “Appropriate for what?” “Appropriate for whom?” No technology is value-free.
Some technologies are appropriate for conditions of growth, vast resources and small populations. Others are appropriate for conditions of stability, plentiful labor and scarce resources. Some technologies increase the wealth of a few while impoverishing the many. Others tend to equalize wealth ana power. Some technologies degrade and destroy the people using them, while others give opportunity for growth of skills, confidence and abilities.
Some technologies consume energ; some provide employment. Some technologies produce goods, others produce good.
The existence of a technology does not require its use any more than the existence of a gun requires us to shoot. It only requires that we examine what happens if we don’t use it and others do, and the effects its use would have on our lives.
Appropriate technology reminds us that before we choose our tools and techniques we must choose our dreams and values, for some technologies serve them, while others make them unobtainable.
Rainbook Magazine, 1977
We’ll be investigating the 1970s concept of Appropriate Technology more in the upcoming months at SudoRoom, as everything old is new again! Read more here at the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology
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