High Technology as Appropriate Technology

There are two alternative concepts of high technology:

1. technology recently emergent from cutting-edge science,
2. "lumpy, cutting-edge technology" that involves heavy capital investment to be used at all as well as recently developments in technology.
   

Contrary to popular belief, both kinds of high technology can have important applications in poverty alleviation in poor countries, and thus be considered as Appropriate Technology. To meet that definition the applications have to have low cost per person served, as well as be sustainable.

In terms of technology emergent from science, consider these examples of vaccine development;

• HIV/AIDS vaccines are the subject of active research and development efforts, both to prevent the disease and to ameliorate its course if a person becomes ill. The science of the disease is difficult because it attacks the immune system itself, because the understanding of retroviruses has had to be created from a very modest basis, and because the retrovirus population evolves very quickly under selection pressure. Because of the importance of AIDS, support for HIV science has been substantial, and many efforts have been funded to create HIV vaccines; substantially more progress has been made in a couple of decades than might have been thought possible. If and when vaccines are developed, it is expected that they will be very cost effective in application. It may be expected that they will be widely used to immunize or treat people, including and especially the very poor in developin nations.
• Malaria vaccine research has been funded, albeit at lower levels, for some four decades. The problem of development of the vaccine is scientifically complicated because the plasmodium is a relatively complex organism, more complex that the viruses or bacteria for which earlier vaccines were developed, and because the plasmodium goes through several forms with very different antigenic properties in each. However, there is a huge population at risk of malaria, a high level of mortality, and if even reasonably efficacious and affordable vaccines can be developed they should be very widely used in tropical developing nations.

The Plasmodium life cycle

Thus technologies that very intensively utilize cutting-edge science may be affordable means of benefiting the lives of very poor people, and these vaccines when developed should be not only affordable but very cost effective means of public health interventions.

As an example of capital-intensive, cutting-edge technology might be the use of computers for the analysis of satellite remote sensing data. Two applications of this technology might illustrate my contention that it is appropriate to the alleviation of poverty in poor nations.

1. The monsoon rains are very important to agriculture on the Indian subcontinent. It is important to predict the exact time of their onset (which is variable) in order schedule the best time to plant crops. That accuracy has economic importance for huge numbers of farmers. Meteorological predictions depend on lots of data and computationally complex model-based extrapolations of current conditions. More complete data and more intensive computation can produce forecasts that are longer range and more accurate. For some decades work has been under way to apply supercomputer modeling to the prediction of the monsoon onset, and these models are based on satellite remote sensing data. The cost of this effort, when amortized over the vast numbers of farmers involved and the average benefit that they can expect, is thought to be quite affordable.



The Indian Monsoon


2. Famine is a local phenomenon, based on a local shortage of (affordable) food that is not met by the timely import of foods. There has never been a famine that was so severe that global food supplies could not have met the global need for food. Accurately forecasting food shortages allows arrangements to be made to import food to prevent famine, and the longer and more accurate the advance warning, the lower the cost that can be negotiated for the necessary food imports. Again, for some decades computers modeling has been used, based on remote sensing data as well as survey and other information, to provide early warning of possible famines in Africa. Again, the approach by benefiting so many people in so large a geographic area is quite cost effective, albeit with a very significant cost involved in the creation of the satellite network and computer capacity it requires.


Fewsnet map of food security for July Sept 2008


On the economics of high, appropriate technology

Source of table: Legal Theory Lexicon


In a previous posting I considered the nature of appropriate technologies as public or private goods. In that posting I focused on the technologies that are widely used such as agricultural technologies used by large numbers of small farmers or techniques of hygiene for use by poor households.

The high technologies discussed in this posting too should be considered in terms of economic theory and its suggestions as to how to finance the development and dissemination of the technology.

Vaccines have the property that they tend to have high levels of externality when used. If a sufficiently large portion of the population can be immunized against a communicable disease, the entire population is protected. Thus it makes sense that means be found to reflect the benefits to those not inoculated in the costs to those who do recieve the inocultations. It is also the case that there is a relatively small number of very adverse side effects from a nation wide immunization campaign, and it is considered important to have an insurance policy that draws from the benefits to the whole population to defray the costs incurred by those who have the adverse reactions. I would also note that people are generally unwilling to pay as much to prevent acquiring a disease as to cure a disease once acquired. Moreover, the cost of disease includes but is not limited to the cost of its medical treatment. For these reasons, immunizations are usually seen as public goods. In the case of AIDS and Malaria, the victims are often poor, but rights and other arguments are made that more affluent people be taxed to assure the public health and the rights to adequate medical assistance of the very poor.

Vaccines are a rivalrous technology, in that a dose given to one person can not be given to another. Moreover, the immunized patient has more protection against the disease than the non-immunized unless a disease is eradicated, and if herd immunity is low, a great deal more protection. Thus a portion of the cost of immunization campaigns can be born by fees for immunization.

The examples of monsoon prediction and famine early warning seem clearly to be "public goods" requiring government financing.

All four of the examples above have resulted in new scientific knowledge. The vaccine development is related to new knowledge of the disease agents and the immune response. The monsoon research and indeed the famine early warning system research have lead to meteorological knowledge, as well as to understanding of the geographic regions involved.

The distinction between science, as the search for knowledge per se, and technology, as the search for practical tools that can be applied in the service of man, is an important and useful one. However, a specific research and development project can and often does contribute both scientific and technological knowledge. In theory, science is a public good, while technology need not be. Thus in theory, the development of the science that underlies the technology in each of the four examples should be publicly funded.

It might be argued that knowledge of parasitic disease is disproportionately of value to those in tropical countries where parasitic diseases are prevalent, but I have seen biomedical researchers state publicly that the understanding of these tropical diseases greatly advanced medical knowledge in general.

Ultimately, the distinction between science and technology is not all that useful in determining the appropriate sources of funding for a specific research and development effort, and those involved in such efforts are often adept at arguing the relevance of their proposed work to any potential funding agency.