Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.94.960930153225.20819F-100000@tophat.stetson.edu> Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 16:04:33 -0400 From: William Nylen <mailto:wnylen@TOPHAT.STETSON.EDU> Subject: Re: "Appropriate technology" still useful? To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Dear Reinaldo,
At a time when profit-driven production attends the "needs" of
about 20-30% of Latin America's population, sending a good percentage of
the profits to international banks and corporations and leaving the rest
of the country in abject and absolute poverty, PLEASE don't try to
pretend that this is what "Appropriate technology" means. Sophistry may
get you elected, or even appointed as a Minister. But it will not erase
the fact that the current model of development in Latin America has failed
all but the most wealthy consumers and the most internationalized
producers. It has never been possible to measure true development in such
aggregate figures as GNP or GDP. Neither can we simply bow to the false
God of economic efficiency. Your television may have 40 channels and your
car may have a nice personalized identity number. But if rising poverty
levels attack some 30% of your urban population and 42% of your rural
population (UNDP figures), urged on by unemployment and a near total
collapse of the financial system -- well, then you've got a problem. And
it's a problem that neoliberalism cannot solve on its own. The kinds of
development programs that Schumacher would have liked ("as if people
mattered") are the kinds of things Joaquim is describing. You should not
dismiss them out of some myopic devotion to free market ideology (rooted,
we should keep in mind, in a set of pre-industrial 18th century ideals of
a country with no international competitors and no systemic constraints).
The State is certainly not the solution in the same way that the
Perons, Castros, and Vargas'es of world thought it was. But neither is
the market. We need to be intelligent and sensitive to the grey-areas
between simple and simple-minded theories. Reality, and real solutions,
are always complicated and difficult patch quilts of various and assorted
ideologies and ideals ... just like the patch quilts that make up our
societies of classes, races, genders and ethnicities. To assert otherwise
is, at best, to be trapped by one's own narrowness and, at worst, to be
imposing one's own self interest onto the rest of society with
jackboot-like subtlety. Either way, the end result is there to be seen
before your very eyes.
Open them.
At root, my friend, it's an ethical question. Open your heart to
your fellow human beings; the ones without 40 channels or even a hope of
buying a car, much less one with personalized identification.
Cheers, Bill Nylen
__________________________
On Sat, 28 Sep 1996, Reinaldo Vicini wrote:
> Dear Joachim and friends:
>
> Please allow me to continue my perhaps boring dissertation about technology
> appropiateness.
>
> As you might know, we could identify two different types of technology: The
> product-oriented technology, and manufacturing-oriented technology.
>
> End-user technology, well, I can't argue about, since we have seen it:
> Telecommunication technologies, Transportation technologies,
> Biotechnologies, etc. Our life expectancy is now higher than it was one
> hundred years ago, even at the poorest places on earth.
>
>
> Manufacturing technology is being pushed by *consumer needs* to get closer
> to the individual needs of consumers. If a "profit-first" company does not
> meet its consumer's needs and expectations it will go to the drain.
> Remember, for instance, allmighty IBM. Who ever though that IBM, the symbol
> of capitalist domination would have as dramatic problems as it did four
> years ago?. Lack of focusing in what their consumers needed. IBM delivered
> what he wanted their customers to buy. Wrong.
>
> Should we take "natural"or "artificial"?. I cannot take for granted that
> manufacturing processes are bound to "not natural". Absolutely not. I would
> look at it more as "ïndividualy-fitted"or "mass-fitted". Nowadays, all
> manufacturing technology is being fitted for less homogeneous output,
> suiting special consumer needs. That is now why even in a country like
> mine, you can order to a local car plant the car exactly as you want it.
> They even give you an id number that helps you tracing where the car is at
> the assembly plant at the time.
>
> My point is exactly that NOT JUST NGOs are trying to work on the
> Appropriate Technology approach. Let's look at it from the commercial
> level. How many thousands of products you find exclusively fitted for the
> Brazilian market? How many products yopu find in Rio Grande fitted only for
> this area.
>
> Appropiate Technology, I believe, is not only a matter of finding a
> tailor-made windmill for a small village. It is developing products and
> processes to fit the needs of the population. Again, there must be a
> critical mass to allow tailor-made solution for a local problem. And they,
> at the end, decide what is right or not.
>
> This is not a case of developing countries only. Please, if you have the
> time, take a look at Michael Porter's "Competitive Advantage of Nations",
> to see how Italy's Sassuolo Region became an international powerhouse in
> the ceramics and tile industry overcoming serious limitations on factors of
> production.
>
> FINALLY
>
> Nothing lasts forever. Even the Roman Empire finished after more than two
> thousand years of domination. I would say, as Borges states, if we are
> living in an infinite universe of time, we have infinite possibilities. It
> is in our hand to turn the page. We have seen big turnaounds in our own
> lives. Are we going to be inferior to the challenge? I refuse to accept it!
> The secret as you say, is to use our own resources and skills to develop
> goods and services that fit our needs, but also, I would add, to fit a
> greater audience of potencial customers.
>
> Our time is always the time.
>
>
>
> Reinaldo Vicini
> mailto:interext@anditel.andinet.lat.net
> http://www.colomsat.net.co/rotarios.bogota
>
>
> Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma
> emerges de las cosas, llena de alma mía.
> Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma,
> y te pareces a la palabra melancolía
> _____________________________________________
>
> Poema 15 - Fragmento Pablo Neruda
> 20 Poemas de amor y una canción 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: Sábado 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.
> ___________________________________________________________________________
>
>