Technology and Gadgets

The appropriate technology (AT) is a technology that is designed with special attention to environmental, ethical, cultural, social and economic aspects of the community, it is intended. With these objectives in mind, AT generally requires fewer resources, is easier to maintain a lower cost and less environmental impact.

Proponents use the term to describe the technologies they consider to be suitable for use in developing countries or sub-rural areas of industrialized countries, who feel can not operate and maintain high technology. Appropriate Technology generally prefers to labor-intensive solutions to more capital-intensive, although labour-saving devices are also used where it does not mean high capital costs or maintenance.

In practice it is often something that could be described as easier by using the level of technology that can effectively achieve the objective in a particular place. However, the terminology is not very precise.

EF Schumacher claims that these technologies, described in the book Small is Beautiful [1] seeks to promote values such as health, beauty and permanence, in that order.

What exactly constitutes appropriate technology in a given case is a matter of debate, but generally, the term is used by theorists to question high technology or what they see as excessive mechanization, displacement, resource depletion and increasing pollution associated with industrialization. The term has often but not always, been applied to the situation of developing countries or sub-rural areas of industrialized countries.

It could be argued that "appropriate technology" for a technologically advanced society May means a more expensive, requiring a complex technology experts and maintenance high energy inputs. However, this is not the usual sense .