Includes bibliographical references (pages [159]-174).
Contents:
Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction : Thesis -- Liberation technology -- Chapter outline -- Guiding notes for the readers. Chapter 1 Technology, institutions and change : Defining technology -- Technology and institutions -- Dichotomy of technologies: traditional vs. modern -- Development priorities -- Technological change models -- Conclusions: understanding technological change. Chapter 2 Towards technological autonomy : Technological dependency and autonomy -- Proposed technological autonomy framework -- Increase in technological capabilities -- Technology localization -- Some elaborations. Chapter 3 Agents of technological change : The state and technological change -- Agents in the market -- General orientations. Chapter 4 Influences on technological affairs: politics, cultures and ecologies : From simplicity to megatechnics: a philosophical view -- Where context matters -- Technology, culture and social systems -- Technology and ecological systems. Chapter 5 Technology and justice : On progress, modernization and westernization -- Global relations of contemporary technology -- Alienation and dispossession -- ICTs and justice -- Technology, the factory, and cooperatives -- Technology and poverty. Chapter 6 Selected stories : How appropriate is appropriate technology? -- Dams and development -- Ujamaa: brilliant vision, dissonant practice. Last remarks -- References.
Summary:
The main treatise of this book is that each developing society ought to seek to achieve technological autonomy in its quest for positive transformations and prosperity for its people. Technological autonomy is about attaining a high level of self-determination in planning and managing technological affairs. Attaining endogenous capacity to guide and execute decisions on production and innovation; creating and transferring key technological products and services; steering relevant foreign and local investment as well as trade; setting own priorities of development free from external manipulation; are goals that must be central to such planning efforts. With evidence and argument, and in plain language, this book suggests a novel way of thinking about development, through envisioning and building better techno-social systems.
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