Appropriate Technology and Human-centered Technologies

• Appropriate technology is an ideological movement (and its manifestations) originally articulated as "intermediate technology" by the economist Dr. Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher in his influential work, Small is Beautiful.
• Though the nuances of appropriate technology vary among fields and applications, it is mostly about technological choice and application that is small scale, labor intensive, energy efficient, environmentally sound and locally controlled.
• Both Schumacher and many modern-day proponents of appropriate technology also emphasize the technology as people centered or Human-centered Technolgy

• The main concept of Appropriate technology is proposed for application in relationship to economic development and as an alternative to transfers of capital-intensive technology from industrialized nations to developing countries.
• Appropriate technology movements can be found in both developing and developed countries.
• In the developed countries, the appropriate technology movement evolved out of the energy crisis of the 1970s and takes up issues mainly on environmental and sustainability issues.
• Some of the prominent examples of Appropriate technology are : bike- and hand-powered water pumps (and other self-powered equipment), use of renewable sources of energy for human benefits, green technologies that have least environmental impact, self-contained solar-powered light, bulbs and streetlights, and passive solar building designs.
• These forms of technologies would address the core issues of the common people who might not possess specialized skills/training and would bring benefits of science to millions of people without detrimental impact on natural environment as well as human health.
• Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, the great Indian philosophers , had advocated these concepts in relation to education where physical labor would be applied by everyone, for generating basic necessities of life as well as wealth by using some kind of human skills for sustenance of a natural and happy living.