#HoloChats: Appropriate Technology
Technology, the tools that enable, can be exciting. We can get enthusiastic about new tools that allow us to connect and play and learn. And, wherever in the world you are, from the remote reaches of the Amazon to the frenetic streets of London, a question arises. What is appropriate technology?
When talking about what is appropriate, context matters a lot. Appropriate technology is appropriate, in some way (environmentally, geographically, culturally, or socially), in some context.
This is a question about sufficiency and trade-offs. Is the technology appropriate to the context? Is it sourced with local materials that are sustainably managed? Does it increase dependencies or does it empower and enable people? Does it foster agency and autonomy?
Planned obsolescence is rarely an appropriate way of creating technology, and yet it is quite common. To avoid it, my son is building his gaming computer from interchangeable parts, so he can remove parts that fail and upgrade to better parts over time. How are you working with appropriate technology?
Your sense of appropriate technology can be quite unique to you.
For Holochats this week, let’s explore:
- Philosophically, what does it even mean to have appropriate technology? In what context? In which ways? Should technology be appropriate?
- For a business, what are the benefits of pursuing appropriate technology? What are the trade-offs? For example, are there software technologies that run better using our hardware, so we can minimize our infrastructure expenses?
- Technically, what is appropriate to software development from a user perspective? Can IoT help us use technology more appropriately, by managing energy usage fluidly?
Learn more about appropriate technology on Appropedia, the wiki for appropriate technology. On Appropedia, appropriate technology refers to anything from solar power to improved cook stoves, from micro-hydro power to rainwater catchment, from earthen construction to plastic bottle schoolrooms. Share your ideas on construction of a wind turbine or building material as well as environmentally-sensitive approaches to water and sanitation issues.
For us at Holo, appropriate technology means creating a crypto platform that has a significantly smaller environmental impact that is also socially empowering.
We invite you into our community, #HoloChats, a distributed conversation! Each of our weekly topics include philosophical inquiry into the nature of the theme as well as business and technical applications around the theme. Collectively our wisdom together can emerge.
To participate, include #Holochats and #theme tags.
Holochats have several steps for a distributed exploration of themes:
- A blog post stating the #theme for the week posing questions, creating shared context, and considerations up for debate. (This one!)
- An interview around the theme {and we encourage you to do so as well!}
- You join in with your own blog, video, and links (new or pre-existing) using the tags #holochats and #theme to be included in the distributed dialogue!
- Each week we can collect together the juicy evolution of responses to the theme and share back through the tags, re-post on our medium, and share our favorite insights.
We hope you join in! This is about distributed awareness and growing our collective intelligence together!
Post your own interviews, blog posts, and other content with the #Holochats #AppropriateTech tags so we can learn from and with you!
Everything is linked for this week by #HoloChats #AppropriateTech.
