Worsening socioeconomic
conditions in the Third World have underscored the urgency of
implementing a development path that de-emphasizes growth and
technological monoculture. The technological orientation of this
development paradigm has been variously called intermediate,
progressive, alternative, light-capital, labor-intensive, indigenous,
appropriate, low-cost, community, soft, radical, liberatory, and
convivial technology. However, appropriate technology, for reasons to
be addressed later, has emerged as the allembracing rubric representing
the viewpoints associated with all the other terms.