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Statement: Appropriate technology is the best solution to most social problems associated with modern society. What’s in the news? Go to the following website to read about an entrepreneur who has invented a number of high-tech solutions to social problems - http://www.benetech.org/download/pa_weekly_reprint.pdf. What do the experts say? “One proposed solution to deal with many of the problems associated with modern technology is to develop what has been called appropriate technology: a technology appropriate to the human scale, to what people can comprehend and relate to; it would be a technology that is limited in size, decentralized, and responsive to human values and needs. In most cases, an appropriate technology would be considerably smaller than what exists today. An example of appropriate technology would be solar energy, which does not require the building of large centralized power plants: The technology is decentralized, with each household or community producing some of its own energy rather than having energy production controlled by large corporations. Appropriate technology has been criticized for being impractical; that those in favor of this plan do not understand how essential large-scale, centralized technology is to modern industrial societies.” What do you think? Note down your answers to the following questions and discuss them in class.
Where do you stand? Now you’ve had a chance hear other people’s views, take the Online Poll.
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