Seeking an Appropriate Technology

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses appropriate technology for manufacturing systems. A technology based on such a view leads to different kinds of problem according to the extent that it succeeds or fails. It is found that to the extent that it succeeds, it will produce great wealth with little human effort. There will, at the same time be a difficulty in securing the equitable distribution of this wealth, produced by a small but intensely productive sector, to those who either are unemployed, or who do work of much lower productivity. It is observed that to the extent that it fails, it will produce, not the workerless factory but one in which men, and women are subservient to machines, doing only those fragmentary jobs that cannot at present be automated. The jobs will not have been designed to be suitable for human abilities, partly because they were overlooked in the quest for total automation, but still more because any reliance on human skill was rejected from the beginning as unprogressive. Both kinds of difficulty stem from an undervaluing, and under-use of human abilities, which is deeply embedded in technological and scientific outlook.