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Can designers make a break through?

A paper to indicate to designers the MEANS to apply Technology within Poverty to problems of Sustainability. Or how to harness amazingly effective systems in poverty to achieve sustainability by upgrading poverty from 1% use of resources to 5%, at the same time downgrading Western needs from 100% to 5%, while gaining comfort and well being on both sides.

Background:

• People within poverty survive thanks to a different technology called 'Technology within Poverty', is also called "Informal technology".
• The effectiveness of 'Technology within Poverty', is low because few believe in it. It is overshadowed by Western technology?
• Technology within Poverty is unique because it is based solely on information
• Technology within Poverty has the potential to develop into a new generation of technology which can fulfill needs with minimal additional resources.
• By making use of this technology, which requires neither capital nor infrastructure, sustainability can be attained at a very fast pace.

Two billion people survive at an income level of less than two percent of the income level in rich Western countries. They achieve this impossible task thanks to a different economy based on a different technology, named "Technology within Poverty". In our paper "Technology for Ten Billion People" we argued that this technology is closely related to Information Technology.
If this "Technology within Poverty" could profit from a similar swift development as our Information Technology, this might strongly reduce the problem of poverty and at the same time provide a base for sustainability in Western economies, accomplishing both at short notice.

One major hurdle to conquer is prejudice; it is difficult to fight one's way out of the usual. This asks for innovation; It takes time and effort to develop a package of basic-tricks, which serve as standard building blocks for a new culture of sustainable design.
Sustainability Science as a discipline advocates combining theory with practice. It points out that sustainability is an interdisciplinary objective, which can only properly be addressed through a direct observation of practice and adjustment of research based upon practical results.
At a different level this is also true for designers, as other hurdles has to be overcome. The reputation of the so called "Appropriate Technology" is low. Its 3d-World clients do not expect result from that approach. And there is no structure to finance this basic research and development.

Who is going to tackle this job ...
The big question remains: who is going to tackle this job to develop 'Technology within Poverty' into 'Technology for Sustainability' ? Harnessing technology within poverty is a means to achieve these goals by redesign. But designers have the task to contribute in the modern world to change and development. For this they have been trained. The breakthrough towards sustainability will require a 20 fold reduction in resources for an equal standard of living. How is that to be managed?
Currently, work for industry provides technical designers with knowledge and experience valuable for a career in the unsustainable Western world. However, if the designers want to contribute to this other low-input technology, they will need to be re-trained to get connected mentally and associatively with the new discipline. Though the design process still regards design, it is harder, takes more time and has to be organized in a different way.

... and how is it done?
For the required innovation to work, it is necessary to let go of the idea of fixing the problem in one step. It is replaced by a quick follow-up of the double-unity of forming concepts plus prototype building. At concrete application, the idea appears to be only partly feasible. However even partly realization shows what new steps are possible from then on. Such adjustments are only recognizable for the team or the person who has chosen the idea to begin with, and so from a fog of many vague ideas. They are NOT obvious or self-evident.
For the designer it requires to be closely connected to the task at hand. Dividing work between idea-forming people and those who do the prototype-building destroys the possibility to change a basic idea in this way. The common practice of task-splitting does block the advancement of the design process.

When design and its realization are integrated, the designer is flooded with new possibilities that meet the criteria better and better. Experience and learning make the designer increasingly able to recognize these possibilities and thus increasingly more effective.

The work the designer has to do is the selection of new steps to be taken, their assessment and the ongoing development of these new possibilities. No designer however is able to develop all of the necessary means and solutions. Only by sharing information, through an open source development, can efforts be combined and result in fast social change at a macro level.

The following guidelines may be kept in mind while designing for 'Technology within Poverty':

Guide lines

• Make sure to create a "self-maintaining system", that fits in what is now the reality within poverty.
• Make sure new facilities are locally affordable. What is asked is more than the 1:5 reduction claimed by the Brundtland report. It is at least a 1:20 reduction, the limits for a sustainable technology. (1:10 to 1:50 according to the Dutch 'Raad voor Milieu en Natuuronderzoek' in 1992). One third of the world's population asks for a still higher reduction, 1:100, because that is the cost level of current technology-within-poverty in relation to the cost level of modern technology.
• Assistance can be limited to new designs that answer the criteria, plus assisting with the local adjustment of this design. Additional financial aid proves to be counter productive for many reasons such as creating unnecessary dependance. Further spread of this particular technology goes on its own strength.
• The functionality of new designs should be the same or better compared to what serves the same goal now. Demotech has some working examples (rope pump, Izigo urban public transport, sustainable living).
• Product development profits from information wherever made available. Information is free at Internet and further spreads where people meet in person. A designer should make good use of these sources and work actively to assist the rapid spread of information.
• Many designers may work independently on the same job, but make sure they exchange their new results. The development of the Linux computer operating system is a good example of such a parallel design process.
• An explosive increase is needed in the speed of development and gained results, to overtake the increasing growth of poverty. Fast improvement is essential to success, slow improvement erodes willingness to take radical action.

Results
The first three guide lines exclude all the usual, but give full freedom to do it different. This freedom is not little. No marketing, no need for styling, no distributing costs, no overhead as each small (mostly informal) production unit takes care of its own business.
What indicates the quality of the designs is: do people copy the idea after the first introduction, do they keep using it and do others copy the idea for their own use?

Mutual benefit form interaction between technology as applied in the informal sector and in modern industry
For spreading practical knowledge Internet came into existence. From there information can spread via market place, tea house and pub to individuals. Certain industries and organizations also can benefit from an Open Source interaction with their clients. The watershed in mode of production between industry and crafts is where for manufacturing special machines are or are not needed. If not, innovation supported traditional production may be superior. The rope pump is an example of such development. Although up to hundred times cheaper because of information-development, this pump has become superior to a factory-pump with a similar function. However, computer chips will not probably ever be made in an upgraded cottage industry.

Who is going to pay the designer?
Someone has to pay the designer. A government, a farmers organization or a consumers organization is in a position to order the re-design of modern technology to fit small scale manufacturing. Amazingly efficient units could result from such initiatives, with an extremely economic use of materials, energy and labour.
Thus conditions are created for a process of development of practically applicable knowledge in interaction between industry and crafts. This can become an autonomous, self-accelerating and self-enforcing process.

Provisions for basic needs will come from crafts and do it yourself activities. The innovative development of these basic provisions will inspire industry, that in turn will make a far more efficient use of recourses.
So harnessing 'Technology within Poverty' may lead to the correction of the unsustainable conduct of our culture. While in its wake emerges the prospect of a more joyful world.