Message-ID: <199609282157.QAA22355@anditel.andinet.lat.net> Date: Sat, 28 Sep 1996 16:31:32 -0500 From: Reinaldo Vicini <mailto:interext@ANDITEL.ANDINET.LAT.NET> Subject: Re: "Appropriate technology" still useful? To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Dear Joaquim and friends:Yes Joaquim, I have surely read Schumacher -it was my bedtime reading for some time- and have toyed for some time with the concept of "technological appropiateness". I like Schumacher since the idea is great. Unfortunely technology difussion is, in my personal opinion, mostly a case of repeatedly *commercial* decisions. I can enjoy in some place your beloved "Guaran½" drink. However, they tried to make it in Colombia and didn't work out, because there was not a critical mass of people interested in the product.
That is why "Guaran½" is a success in your country. The technology to make a soft drink from the Guaran½ -fruit I think...- is tailored for local needs and has a big enough critical mass to succeed. We cannot say that is a second class technology because it came from a developing country if that's what you mean. Absolutely not. It is just like in any other country, isn't it? It would be nice to create a technology for every particular situation, since we know that it is impossible to find that two places are the same. However, there is an approximation. That is why a commercial product, emboiding a particular class of technology, succeeds.
Take the example of Brazil's computer industry -From what I read from your posting, I now you have a say in the issue-. Even though the market was big enough, the trend for some years was developing a new and independent direction in IT, taking as a base existing technology at the time. Result: Brazil tried to build into a technology -minicomputer technology- that faded away and their knowledge base eventually became obsolete. I am sure you heard about smugglers who sold microcomputers to Brazil at that time when it was prohibited. Yes.. normal IBM or Apple type microcomputers were banned for some time in Brazil. However, you remember how much one of those "Cobra" minicomputers cost didn't you?
But don't take it personally. I certainly admire Brazil's effort. I believe that Brazilian professionals in semiconductors are extremely competent. Unfortunely, when their time to compete came, they were overshadowed by the technological muscle of others. Not just US. Take South Korea, that in 1945 were poorer that Colombia! Not to mention Brazil. Ironic. It is not about political freedom, but FREEDOM TO USE ANY AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY.
As a modest opinion, I believe that UNFORTUNELY we can't control people's minds. We cannot tell them "What is appropiate for them" To read, to dress or to watch. For instance, take Brazilian Soap Operas. They are wonderful. I don't watch them, but some of them I did. Very pintoresque, showing how people live or used to live in Brazil. I certainly would describe them as a wonderful example of "appropiate technology", where they present particular ways of living that people in Russia, China, and even Colombia don't live. A *comercial* success. A product fitted for local taste that fits into the universal bag of preferences. We can't force -obligar- people from other countries to see it or not to see it. It all ends up in a single sentence "I like it or I don't like it". Whether I like soap operas or not -I don't like them personally- many people do and I can't force them not to watch them. It's their freedom, their right to choose.
It is unfortunate, isn't it? All our well intentioned efforts to stop people from doing evil and seeing evil all ends up in people's hands. The unprepared ones. The manipulated ones. The masses. The right to choose!. I want to see evil. I like it. They go anywhere and do it. However, it concerns to all when he is going to affect us, the majority.
Enough for this posting, I will continue in a separate one, in order of not making it too tedious or large.
Reinaldo Vicini mailto:interext@anditel.andinet.lat.net http://www.colomsat.net.co/rotarios.bogota
Como todas las cosas est½n llenas de mi alma emerges de las cosas, llena de alma mía. Mariposa de sueôo, te pareces a mi alma, y te pareces a la palabra melancolía _____________________________________________
Poema 15 - Fragmento Pablo Neruda 20 Poemas de amor y una cancin desesperada
---------- From: Joaquim Moura <mailto:joaquim.moura@persocom.com.br> To: Reinaldo Vicini <mailto:interext@ANDITEL.ANDINET.LAT.NET> Cc: Marcus A. Hairstone <mailto:MHAIRSTONE@worldnet.att.net>; Barbara Bloch mailto:<bb@partners.poa.com>; Gary Heusel <fhyd001@unlvm.unl.edu>; Joaquim Moura mailto:<joaquim.moura@persocom.com.br>; Lew Guerin <lguerin@mcs.com>; Truda Roper mailto:<ex031@mail.vt.edu>; William Nylen <wnylen@tophat.stetson.edu>; Tom Abeles mailto:<tabeles@tmn.com>; Cathy Healy <cathhealy@aol.com> Subject: "Appropriate technology" still useful? Date: S½bado 28 de Septiembre de 1996 11:13 AM
I refer to Reinaldo's last message (copied at the bottom of this message)
Firstly, how can Reinaldo admire Schumacher's "Small is beautiful" and find the concept of "technology appropriateness" absolutely nonsense? Secondly, why did the world, smaller by telecommunications, change the "appropriate technology" into an "insult to intelligence of our developing countries"? Did he read the book, indeed?
Dear Reinaldo, "appropriate technology" is not supposed to be a second class technology, typical of corrupted and old-fashioned countries, or a collection of resources already tried and failed. No, appropriate technology is just what the name tells: more appropriate from the environmental point-of-view, for instance, or from the job creation point-of-view, or from the local resources utilization point-of-view. I cannot see how neoliberalism can substitute adequate local resources using, job creation or environmental soundness by cable TV programming, American football games or Brazilian soap operas, which have incredible audiences in many countries around the world, including Russia, China and Cuba...
The world became smaller but the problems are still getting bigger and bigger every day. Yesterday night I saw a TV program showing the modern life in Russia. A remarkable issue is that in Russia now they can see Brazilian soap operas. Is this a real progress, since soap operas just show egotism, greed, envy, precocious erotism, revenge, jalousie and very personal materialistic concerns? In the Brazilian TV soap operas (from TV Globo, famous around the world) - even more than in the modern commercial American movies - all the characters are concerned just with their "petit bourgeois" problems, and they never discuss any social or intellectual issue. They are always and for many years now teaching the people that life can be lived without any social or community awareness and commitment.
Also, "appropriate" technology is still an inedited solution for the populations' problems. In Brazil, for example, just NGOs have tried projects based on "appropriate technologies", never the government - at least, not at a significative level... But I am sure that if government tries it, it would produce an important and total upgrade for the population's quality of life.
And tell me, Dear Reinaldo, what is the relation between products' QUALITY and TECHNOLOGY? Remember Bach, Da Vinci and Freud, for example: how much technology did they need to produce their outstanding works? (just to stay inside the occidental tradition, but I also know other high quality products from many other cultures, based on their own "tech-etnologies"). Do the "natural" products have less quality than the "technological" ones? Do you prefer eating "natural" food or vitamins or the "last generation" industrialized food and vitamins? Do you prefer fertilizing your garden soil and healing your plants with "natural" composted hummus and sound management or using "industrialized" "fertilizers" and pesticides? Do you prefer (in daily conditions) preventive "natural" living habits and "soft" therapies or the "technological- industrialized-chemmical" medicine products and methods? Do you prefer clothes made of "natural" or synthetic fabrics? Natural or synthetic wood to cover a wall with? There are many other examples, for every aspect of our lives, where you shall choose between nature proven experience and industry's "profit-first" concerns and motivation.
Of course, there are also the issues where "tomorrow"'s technologies are very welcome, like airplanes, emergency medicine, computers and networking, but a whole population cannot make their living on these intensive capital (and few jobs) industries.
Just adopting conventional "modern technologies" and neoliberalism will keep a country underdeveloped and dependent to the developed ones forever; but by properly mixing appropriate and "state-of-the-art" technologies, we will be able to fully develop our nation's whole potential. ___________________________________________________________________________