Message-ID: <324F273F.6DCE@iscs.nus.sg> Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 09:49:51 +0800 From: "Dr. CJ Meadows" <mailto:meadows@ISCS.NUS.SG> Subject: Re: ideas of "appropriate technology" still respected? To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Gene,I can't speak for an entire community, but as an academic interested in technology & economic development, I'm still interested in the ideas and am beginning to write/research about them using ideas from Schumacher and more recent works by other people. There are some things Schumacher didn't (couldn't, I guess) take into account in terms of globalization and how "inappropriate" technologies can provide capabilities (rather than merely replacing labour) that make emerging economies part of the global marketplace. And technology has more effects on the nation than merely being a labor-capital tradeoff, as pointed out in Pitroda's 1993 Harvard Business Review article. On building capabilities for the global marketplace, there is, however, some debate as to how much benefit emerging economies really get out of being part of the global marketplace & whether the world is dividing into "globals" and "locals" regardless of geographic location. That puts a different spin altogether on where "small & appropriate" technologies belong and potentially removes the nation from the issue (only partially, though -- I believe it is still a major factor because it is a boundary for many infrastructures).
Anyway, I'm trying to be brief and am not doing so. If you consider academics part of the "development community," then one of us still feels an impact from the ideas. If not, then I'd be interested in what others in the real community have to say.
Cheers!
CJ
gene o'regon wrote: >
> having been in my youth a great admirer of e.f. schumacher's "small
> is beautiful" ideas, especially his ideas about "appropriate technology" for
> developing countries, i wondered whether those ideas are still having an
> impact in the development community?
> thanks,
>
> gene
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-- *******************************************************Dr. CJ Meadows National University of Singapore Department of Information Systems and Computer Science 10 Lower Kent Ridge Road, S16, #04-09 Singapore 119260 Phone: 65-772-6561 Fax: 65-779-4580 E-mail: mailto:meadows@iscs.nus.sg WWW: http://www.iscs.nus.sg/~meadows/