In Praise of Down-Tech

          In Praise of Down-Tech

 

          I define “down-tech” as “doing high-tech work with low-tech tools”. Down-tech economizes on tech; its converse is “up-tech”; doing low-tech work with high-tech tools. I also call up-tech “uppity-tech”,  “hype-tech”, or “absolute technology”.

          The virtues of down-tech are simplicity, familiarity, security, and liberty. Down-tech requires ingenuity, invention, hard work, and care; the personal virtues of independence. In contrast, up-tech rewards dependency, laziness, and neglect; the price it asks for these fashionable vices is complexity, alienation, and conformity.

          Down-tech is crash-resistant. It is denied the system’s luxuries, but spared its catastrophes. A hand-powered typewriter doesn’t need a power line, but the Internet’s functionality is at the mercy of distant equipment. A slide rule depends only on the universal laws of logarithms; a PC depends on IBM’s latest marketing strategy. An abacus will always work, but Bill Gates can always declare that your operating system is obsolete.

          Down-tech delivers adequate goods at low cost, high security, and with maximal adaptability. By contrast up-tech delivers “perfect” (by corporate standards) goods at high cost, low security, and with minimal adaptability. Down-tech gives maximum performance at minimum cost; the true aim of tech!

          Down-tech is usually “obsolete” tech; its machines still physically work but are no longer promoted by profit-seeking corporations. Having attained maximal functionality, down-tech is abandoned – for precisely that reason! Down-tech bears witness to up-tech’s perversity.

All technologies eventually fail, for nature’s mathematical order is mirrored by natural chaos within mathematics. Down-tech is 90% useful 100% of the time. Up-tech is 100% useful 90% of the time, and 100% useless 10% of the time. Technology malfunctions, and absolute technology malfunctions absolutely.

          Down-tech is the tech which survives this ruthless Darwinian test. Down-tech is therefore cheapskate tech, recycled tech; it’s the kind of tech that managed to outlast its originators. Down-tech selects for resiliency. Bet on down-tech; it will survive.