What role will low-tech play in tomorrow’s society?

Smart­phones, con­nec­ted speak­ers, tab­lets, com­puters, con­nec­ted watches… High-tech devices are pro­lif­er­at­ing in our homes. The impact of this tech­no­lo­gic­al explo­sion on the plan­et is now well known. Only 1% of the rare earths used to man­u­fac­ture these objects, such as indi­um or gal­li­um, are recycled on a glob­al scale. Not to men­tion the pol­lu­tion caused by the massive use of data. Over the last ten years or so, the low-tech move­ment has been cam­paign­ing for a new defin­i­tion of mod­ern­ity and innov­a­tion, where we ques­tion our con­sump­tion and our habits.

The concept of low-tech was once seen as an oppos­i­tion to pro­gress, a rejec­tion of tech­no­logy in favour of simple, home-made solu­tions. In real­ity, it’s part of a wider move­ment to reflect on our envir­on­ment­al impact, our needs and our ways of meet­ing them, which dates back to the 1970s. It’s not about going back to the candle, nor is it simply about pro­mot­ing green indus­tri­al tech­no­lo­gies or eco-designed objects. The Low-Tech Lab defines low tech­no­lo­gies as “objects, sys­tems, tech­niques, ser­vices, know-how, prac­tices, life­styles and ways of think­ing that integ­rate tech­no­logy accord­ing to three main prin­ciples”. These tech­no­lo­gies must be use­ful and meet indi­vidu­al and col­lect­ive needs.

“It’s a ques­tion of col­lect­ively reappro­pri­at­ing needs, ask­ing ourselves togeth­er what is really use­ful and what isn’t,” explains Quentin Mateus, engin­eer and dir­ect­or of research at the Low-Tech Lab. They need to be access­ible, free of copy­right and as simple as pos­sible so that they can be used by as many people as pos­sible, they need to be loc­ally pro­duced, they need to be adapt­able to the needs and resources of each con­text, and so on. Lastly, low-tech products must be sus­tain­able, optim­ised to have the least pos­sible eco­lo­gic­al and social impact, and as robust as pos­sible, like L’In­crev­able, a wash­ing machine designed by design­ers and engin­eers to last 50 years and be eas­ily repaired and updated by its owners.

Low-tech involves a col­lect­ive, demo­crat­ic and par­ti­cip­at­ive pro­cess of reflec­tion, decision-mak­ing and train­ing. “You have to help people devel­op their skills, if they don’t have the abil­ity to begin with, so you have to give them free plans and learn­ing frame­works, so that they can be more autonom­ous in repair­ing and adapt­ing the object to my needs and con­text”, explains the engin­eer. There really is no pre­cise defin­i­tion of low-tech, no label or spe­cific­a­tions, but the concept, which is based on broad prin­ciples, can be applied to a wide range of areas: mobil­ity, digit­al uses, hous­ing, food, edu­ca­tion, cul­ture, etc.

Low-tech also has a social and polit­ic­al dimen­sion. In 2019, the think-tank La Fab­rique éco­lo­gique pub­lished a note on these sober and resi­li­ent tech­no­lo­gies, signed by a num­ber of play­ers in the move­ment, includ­ing Phil­ippe Bihouix and Aman­dine Garni­er of the Low-Tech Lab, as well as Bruno Tassin, dir­ect­or of research at the Ecole des Ponts Par­isTech, and Marc Dar­ras, chair­man of the Cent­rali­ens “Ingénieur et Dévelop­pe­ment Dur­able” pro­fes­sion­al group.The note explains that “this approach is not just tech­no­lo­gic­al, but also sys​tem​ic​.It aims to chal­lenge eco­nom­ic, organ­isa­tion­al, social and cul­tur­al mod­els”. So, it’s also about ima­gin­ing new mod­els of con­sump­tion, pro­duc­tion, and gov­ernance. “It’s a mis­take to simply want to replace high-tech with low-tech out of con­cern for the envir­on­ment. It’s about ques­tion­ing high-tech and its world”, says Quentin Mateus.

Accord­ing to Mar­tina Knoop, a phys­i­cist and dir­ect­or of the Mis­sion pour les ini­ti­at­ives trans­verses et inter­dis­cip­lin­aires (MITI) at the CNRS, which has already put out two calls for research pro­jects to pro­mote “frugal sci­ences”, sci­ence and research­ers have their right­ful place in this pro­cess of ques­tion­ing. “Low-tech approaches are frugal approaches. It’s about doing just as well with less invest­ment in mater­i­als, energy, research time and so on,” she explains. To achieve this, research­ers are look­ing at sim­pler pro­cesses, instru­ments and sensors that con­sume few­er nat­ur­al resources. All dis­cip­lines are involved.

By way of example, one pro­ject selec­ted by the CNRS is con­cerned with mon­it­or­ing air pol­lu­tion. Mélina Macouin, a research­er at the Geosciences and Envir­on­ment Labor­at­ory in Toulouse, is using plane tree bark as bio­sensors to ana­lyse the pres­ence of nan­o­particles. The study is a blend of low-tech and par­ti­cip­at­ory sci­ence, with Toulouse res­id­ents invited to put up gar­lands of plane tree bark in their homes. This approach to cit­izen sci­ence, which is often low-tech, is becom­ing increas­ingly pop­u­lar, accord­ing to the dir­ect­or of MITI. “Doing bet­ter with less is an inher­ent part of research, in all our pro­cesses. It is some­times more dif­fi­cult and com­plex to invent a sim­pler, less energy-con­sum­ing pro­cess that per­forms just as well. Con­straints can be a source of invent­ive­ness and the basis of future innov­a­tions”, says the physicist.

What role will sci­ent­ists play in a low-tech soci­ety? “If we are to put in place the con­di­tions neces­sary for the devel­op­ment of a low-tech eco­nomy in all its dimen­sions, these new forms of research, which are also more dis­trib­uted and more firmly rooted in each con­text, have their full role to play, and in the pro­cess a sense of pur­pose to redis­cov­er. We need brain­power, col­lect­ive intel­li­gence and a high level of social, eco­nom­ic and tech­nic­al engin­eer­ing to dis­mantle what is no longer viable, to real­loc­ate, to recom­pose appro­pri­ate sec­tors and a lace­work of soci­o­tech­nic­al organ­isa­tions. It will take time and human intel­li­gence, but not neces­sar­ily a high data through­put”, argues Quentin Mateus.

A low-tech soci­ety there­fore requires us to rethink the way we prac­tise sci­ence and tech­no­logy, as well as the place of industry. For the Low-Tech Lab rep­res­ent­at­ive, it’s not a ques­tion of get­ting rid of the sec­tor and our indus­tri­al fab­ric. Once again, we need to think in terms of needs.

In 2021, ADEME, the French Agency for Eco­lo­gic­al Trans­ition, has drawn up a scen­ario for a “frugal gen­er­a­tion” to achieve car­bon neut­ral­ity by 2050. This would include “respect for nature” and the estab­lish­ment of a pro­duc­tion sys­tem based on low-tech, “more robust and repair­able by cit­izens”. It would involve cut­ting elec­tri­city con­sump­tion by a third for spe­cif­ic uses such as elec­tron­ics and house­hold appli­ances, switch­ing to more extens­ive farm­ing, sig­ni­fic­antly redu­cing mobil­ity (by encour­aging cyc­ling, for example), relo­cat­ing cer­tain pro­duc­tion pro­cesses and redu­cing demand for products and ser­vices by giv­ing pride of place to the “eco­nomy of func­tion­al­ity and repair”. The over­all demand for energy – elec­tri­city, heat, gas and pet­rol – would be halved com­pared to 2015. Green­house gas emis­sions would fall by 42 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

Sirine Azouaoui