Any reflection on alternative technology (AT) prompts the question, Alternative in what sense? According to one AT theorist, there are three dimensions to this question (Illich 1997). The alternatives can be technical, ethical, or political. In the first case the divide is between hard (oversized machines) and soft (smaller, local tools), in the second between heteronomy and autonomy in technology, and in the third between centralized (right) and decentralized (left) technological systems.

Technical Alternatives

In 1917 D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson published On Growth and Form, a study of the relation of shape and size in living beings and artifacts. His law of similitude states that every natural and technical shape is scale-variant, that is, shape or form is strongly influenced by size. According to J. B. S. Haldane (1956), for instance, the form of all natural organisms is covariant with their scale: A cow the size of an elephant would...