The Community's Role in Appropriate Technology

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.

Founder with Fritz Schumacher of the Intermediate Technology Development Group in London, George McRobie discusses the role of intermediate technology in building self-sufficient regional economies. He explains that engineers should be trained to scale down their designs to meet the cultural, economic, and natural-resource conditions of local place. When engineers design to save energy and capital rather than to save labor, the resulting technology facilitates the creation of large numbers of workplaces rather than centralizing manufacturing. McRobie sees intermediate technology as a tool to redistribute wealth, giving back to communities, families, and local organizations the power that has gradually been taken from them.