In the 1970s onwards there had been a lot of thinking about "appropriate" technology, a technology according to the "human measure", gentle, considerate, etc. (It's the genalogy of E.F. Schumacher, Gary Snyder, Wendel Berry, Ivan Illich, Gregory Bateson, Ernest Callenbach, Vine Deloria Jr., Theodore Roszak, Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog culture, Vandana Shiva, Stephanie Mills etc..)

Pretty much all concepts of technology developed in these times and circles identified a "gentle" or approriate" technology with a localized, villiage-sized technology. That is, in order for things to be "soulful" or "soul preserving", they had to be very local and very simple. The idea, mostlöy, seems to have been that only a technology that is "small" can avoid to control or coerce a human being or a group of humans, whereas scaled technology were always imbued with hierarcghy, control, alienation.

I think that such concepts of technology not only restrict us in what may be count as permissible technology, but it also restricts us in what we can responsibly deal with: If it's too big, we cannot have it. Which pretty much leaves the main questions unanswered: How, e.g., to run a nuclear power plant, the layers of infrastructures of a society, the complex trade and political relations?

So I'd suggest a slightly different approach that leaves aside the presupposition that scale impacts humaneness.

In Greek mythology there had been two Gods of time: Chronos and Kairos. The first an emblem of our chronological order of time, the second an emblen of the right, the appropriate, the critical moment. An awareness of these aspects is something technology (or its pursuit) should encompass or rely on. A sense for the right measure that is not grounded in some awareness of or subjection to practical constraints and material necessities, but in the awareness of the right, the appropriate, the critical moment... for action, for choosing a path, for planning a goal, for being open to process (that is human- and not machine-centred...).

This approach could be called "kairo-tic technology".

It would be a technology that keeps in mind a sensitivity for the right, appropriate, even critical moments and circumstances. (That it also plays on associations of chaos and erotics gives rise to further smiles.)

Does this correspond to what you had in mind?

cc #talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten