This is my own term for what i'm doing... I may have mentioned in other threads (I did on the original message boards for sure) that i've had my own projects along similiar lines for a long time, just that they were going slowly and I had no help so I wasn't able to get much of anywhere with them so far...

Appropriate Technology is the term "generally recognized as encompassing technological choice and application that is small scale, labor intensive, energy efficient, environmentally sound and locally controlled." It is people centric technology, rather than business centric. It is far more suited to the developing world and conditions of poverty. Many concepts overlap OSE but not exactly, there are some differences, primarily extreme flexibility and an extreme focus on adaptions to function despite the most desperate poverty where the use of scrap and whatever is available that can be pressed into service is the norm rather than the exception.

If you check out some of my postings in other areas, you'll note I advocate extreme flexibility. Think "principles" rather than plans, things like dimensions are given ranges rather than absolutes, along with the advantages or disadvantages to favor one extreme or the other, plus recommended mediums and why, to facilitate as much flexibility as possible on behalf of the actual end person creating things to be empowered with choice. One person's decision to make the tractor 2 inches narrower than ideal might be because he can fit it in his barn if it's 2 inches narrower and he absolutely cannot otherwise, and that's a compromise he's willing to make. Another may actually want an extra wide and low chassis for stability due to having to work in hilly regions. Each designer is given a salad bar like approach, simply choose whatever you want off the shelf and stick it together in a way that best serves YOU. There are no "standard plans", just plans for each module, and ranges of variables acceptable at each step of construction. Each module well engineered, and tested at the extremes to know what can be stated to be recommended, not recommended but possible, and clearly beyond design into dangerous areas. Principles are offered which can be adapted, for instance a tractor designed to sidehill at 32 degrees, what if you absolutely HAVE to farm your hill and it just happens to be 40 degrees? The modifications necessary to do so are outlined along with the compromises necessary for them to work. Some might even be considered crude, or substandard or something like you would never see on a tractor for sale commercially, but they would be things which work, are safe, and allow the job to be completed without the costs normally required for specialized situations.

The support for things not directly recommended, but which careful and aware people can apply and carry out is needed because best solutions always cost more money than finding a way to make do with what you have. That many problems are not "commercially viable" or have too low of a profit margin for some large business to get involved in the problem solving process keeps people all over the globe wrongfully disempowered, and OSAT would be intended to be a toolkit, framework, and philosophy intended to help them live better, to give the margins of society a lift by the bootstraps in situations where sometimes just getting through another year or two, or saving a few thousand dollars here or even a few hundred dollars there can mean the difference of life and death.

All aspects of living could be covered, from the similar projects of tractors and such on to building your own appliances, or machinery intended to earn a profit and an income for someone, built out of scrap, who may be aware of a market need and have the will and interest to meet it but is left out of the normal abilities to access finance or enough reliable work to justify or risk or pay for a commercial machine doing the same job, requiring a certain lifetime minimum of work to even pay for itself, especially since the margins of society often have to fight over market opportunities in the first place. The market may be sporadic, unreliable, specialized, or just too small to be bothered for with big business, but accessible to one with a mind and a will to claim them. Of no interest to the big businessman who is only interested in the lowest hanging fruit, the biggest profits, the easiest most wide ranging needs that can be filled by mass production with no care about those whose needs by fate of birth or situation do not perfectly align with the businessman's requirement for profit. OSAT would be like teaching a man how to fish so he could feed himself rather than giving him fish, it is hard to do safe engineering if you have absolutely no background in it. It overlaps with OSE but I think encompasses things beyond it as well.

It is wrong that someone should lose a limb or their life from their own cobbled up machine because they just didn't know any better or didn't have an engineering degree or understand certain risks, offering engineering help to others to show them how to do something better, even if they still have to do it themself. Telling them they shouldn't do it until they afford to do it the "right way", the way of people who can afford better do it means they will NEVER be able to do it for some, education of a range of compromises and their relative risks is far more empowering. Denying them the ability to do it because they are tools beneath what we would personally want to use on our own farm could mean life or death for some, perhaps a questionable but usable tractor from scrap allows them to finish a job or a harvest that would otherwise be lost and leave people unfed in famine for a year. Maybe that's all they need to make the next jump.

Every year right now there are people dying on Pine Ridge reservation for instance over totally preventable things, houses you can see through, running out of heat because they dont know how to fix bad or old insulation problems, not being able to access healthy food on their budget... this is all a little stream of consciousness I know right now but i'm just sharing alot of bottled up thoughts feelings and frustrations in this post of how every year there's people dying that I could help if I could just get over certain "barriers to entry" myself which would then let me reach out and help them, but because everything is always just a bit too far beyond my reach (ie a LifeTrac costing about $1000 more than it's possible for me to get ahold of, under ANY circumstances, no matter WHAT I do due to other bills even when having one would save money on those bills, this situation has remained now for several years and i'm always this far away it seems that unless the bar is lowered i'll never be able to get to it) i'm prevented from not only accessing my own plans for rural living but everyone that could be helped by my being empowered with the tools to share with those that so desperately need it but are even further away from getting to the tools than me.

Sorry if this is a little disjointed, I made this post in a vent after talking to a friend on Pine Ridge mentioning more people dying from totally preventable things again and I feel like here I am with a brain willing to help and do my part but no help from other sources to do the things i'm not able to do and so I feel like i'm a good engine with no car around to even fit into. I want to work and do something and cant year after year, a solution is just always beyond hands reach somehow but never impossibly far away, just chance and circumstance. The only thing that could and would fix most of these problems is technology and engineering related but it all feels artificially handicapped with stumbling blocks put in the way that shouldn't even be there by other sources and other people, sometimes even well meaning people, whether it's negative reactions, saying "oh that cant be done", just being busy with an already decided plan that others are sure is the best way even though cracks and problems in the plan have already reared their heads, or just being uninterested in detouring a few millimeters off a prescribed course even if it might save a life or something. It feels like I will have to reinvent the wheel from scratch, do everything completely by myself, and by the time I actually get to somewhere functional where it's making a difference for others it will be too late for those I actually cared to try and save in the first place when I could have saved them had I received just the slightest right type of help at the right time. :(

Like am ambulance driver encountering several petty annoyances that hold him up just one minute each time (a car that wont move because someone who doesn't care is talking on the cellphone, an old lady with a shopping cart who cant be bothered to get out of the street, and say the poor organization of something before you even got in the ambulance from someone not doing a job they were supposed to and responsible for) and then you arrive at a scene, and youre exactly one minute too late to do anything to save a life, all the sudden those seemingly minor things that the people who didn't care at the moment or in their mind didn't think were such a big deal because it was so minor to them take on an entirely different meaning. To the others i'm probably considered to be overreacting "over the person not doing what I want" (in the minds of others) but the emotional weight of the outcome is whats weighing heavy on me of things it feels almost within range to fix but I cant.


Sorry to vent on this publically...