OSE Appropriate Technology Vision

Appropriate technology is a condition where humans have befriended technology, and have succeeded in its robustification to the point that anyone can design, build, and use any technological artifact. This requires a framework of open, collaborative development.

The conviviality or affection of technology is a condition where technology has become increasingly human-centered and its user interface so simple, that anyone can be the master of the technology that they use. This solves the perennial critique of people being enslaved by technology. On one side, there is wisdom to use technology wisely. However, that wisdom is not sufficient for someone to master the things that they use: proprietary black box technology that requires specialist skills and which is designed for obsolescence - traps people in high cost, dependence, and makes life harder when critical technology fails. These are precisely the issues that technology was supposed to solve in the first. Thus, the myth of technology is alive and well.

Today we have technology that allows a single individual to produce enough goods for thousands of others. Yet many people in the advanced countries are poor [1]. This is an an issues that can be solved easily in principle, but not easily in execution.

OSE's solution is to distribute wealth. We do this by collaborative design of Distributive Enterprise and the associated Distributed Market Substitution. This has not been solved yet.

Key to AT

The OSE Way envisions integrated, modular technology designed such that anyone can build their world like with Legos. Integrated means not highly specialized to one task, but diversified to complete processes. For example, look at tree mulching in city departments. Instead of producing mulch (hammermill or chipper) - what if this same operation involved a much more integrated machine, still comparable in size to a full mulching rig - which does much more. Think of a fuel combine. The machine chips, pelletizes, burns, and produces - charcoal. A much higher value product, which the machine itself uses to fuel itself in a carbon neutral way and which is an effective distributed solution to oil wars. Now we're talking. But only via viral uptake at distributed scale - and with more advanced engines that can burn charcoal - can this happen. Precisely a great problem for open collaboration and solving Pressing World Issues. Much bigger than mulching trees - especially if the operator can then generate much more wealth to become financially independent, an not an Ethical Burden to society.