E.F. Schumacher (1911-1977) was an economic thinker, statistician and economist. He often critiqued the Western economies ad made proposals for human-scale, decentralized and appropriate technologies. In the 1970s, appropriate technologies referred to “technological choice and application that is small-scale, decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and locally controlled.” Both Schumacher and more recent advocates of appropriate technologies agreed that such technologies should be people-centred.
Schumacher published Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered in 1973 during the energy crisis and the emergence of globalization. As compared to the current day philosophy of “bigger is better”, Schumacher believed that not only were appropriate technologies more empowering to people but that the modern society, both then and especially now, was not and is not sustainable. His insights about economy, pollution, sustainability, “enoughness”, and the need for justice, harmony, beauty and health to come before the “philosophy of materialism” are all still relevant today.
Sources:
Hazeltine, B.; Bull, C. (1999). Appropriate Technology: Tools, Choices, and Implications. New York: Academic Press. pp. 3, 270. ISBN 0-12-335190-1.
The National Center for Appropriate Technology. “The History of NCAT”. Retrieved March 2011.
Schumacher, E. F.; Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered : 25 Years Later…With Commentaries (1999). Hartley & Marks Publishers ISBN 0-88179-169-5
