APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY Intermediate Technology Los Angeles (ITLA) c/o Keith Pritsker 327 S. Hoover St., No. 204 Los Angeles, CA 90020 We've always said that all this business is most appropriate to over-developed countries, so we're glad to see a group formed in one of the most over-developed spots of all. Their q~arterly newsletter covers ideas, book reviews, events, 'and letters. It can be had by individuals for $10, groups for $15 or $7.50 for students, senior citizens and other low income people from ITLA, c/o Jack DeSwart, 2310 Glenco, Venice, CA 90291. The above address is for general correspondence. Write there to find out about the group's meetings and projects. -LdeM Volunteers in Technical Assistance Publications 3706 Rhode Island Avenue Mt. Rainier, MD 20822 VITA is making a major effort to put the wealth of information assembled in its years of technical assistance into available and readily usable form. VITA News is expanded and contains much more information. A series of technical bulletins is now available. A series of manuals co-published with the J>eace Corps is underway (so far Small Farm Grain Storage: Drying, Rodent Control, Storage Techniques; Freshwater Fish Pond Culture and ruustrated by Marie McAuliffe Management; and Reforestation in Arid, Lands are available), along with many other new and updated VITA publications. Write for their new publications catalog. -TB Appropriate Technology: Pro.blems and Promises, Part I, Nicolas Jequier, 1976, $2 in U.S., $1 to developing countries fron:i: Volunteers in Asia Box 4543 • ~Stanford, CA 94305 Volunteers in Asia has just prepared a low-cost edition of Nicolas Jequier's . paper that OECD was selling for $12.50 aI].d that was available for $7 from ControlData Technotech under the title "An Inquiry into Low Cost Technology Policy Issues." Thanks VIA! • It's a good solid ov~rv-iew of a. t. for the Third World and contains good heresy like saying information access centers are usually too expensive ($150 per inquiry) compared to people just writing letters themselves to find out exactly what they need. -TB €ueuc INTERES~· How We Won the War, General Vo Nguyen Giap, $2 from: RECON. Publications 702 Stanley Street Ypsilanti, MI 48197 The myths underlying many of our major institutions are simultaneously hitting dead ends-big things· they can't February/March 1978 RAIN Page 15 deny but which won't fit into thei~ basic, hypotheses. Acupuncture runs totally counter to all our medical theories, but it' works. Physics has fallen into a black hole of mathematical conjecture. And not least of all, the world's greatest military power has just lost a major war to a tiny, poor and non-industrialized nation-yet no one asks why. There are some big answers and-important new visions beneath these failures. Behind its jargon, this little book by the winning· team in Vietnam gives some beginning clues. -TB The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the Development of Technology, Arnold Pacey, 1974, $6.95 from: M.I.T. Press 28 Carleton St. , Cambridge, MA 02~42 Pacey presents an overview of the development of technology by discussing the ideas a.s well as the ideals and objectives, the discipline and methods that evolved as a r_esult in each phase of its evolution. He also discusses.the differences between intellectual and symbolic objectives in technical progress; one based on the rationalism of science and mathematics and the other whose significance is non-utilitarian. He offers us a background f~r reforrr~ulating and redirecting the future of technology while keeping in mind that "It is not an abstract, unbiased and morally neutral collection of useful skills and knowledge," but that it has much to do with the way people organize their society. -JM I recently had another hit that threw more cold water on all the fancy information theorid I keep hearing about. I had the good fortune to spend a couple of evenings with Jim Laukes and Bethe Hagens of AcQrn in Illinois. They told me that when Governor's State University there was setting up its library and information cataloguing system a few years ago (it's a brand new university) they talked to a wide variety of places trying to find out what systems worked the best. Two of t~e answers they got were from Playboy and United Press International-two large organizations that presumably have sophisticated ways of keeping track of their information. Playboy said they simply file everything by the girl's name. UPI's computer information system is nothing more -than two 'old geezers down in the basement who've been ther~ forever and ki-iow everything. What about you? - Lane deMoll
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