We are surrounded by technology. We have our ancient ancestors to thank for that, they started it all. Ever since they climbed down from the trees, they've been at it . . . . applying knowledge. "Science" in its broadest sense simply means an organised collection of knowledge on a subject. Technology is the application of that knowledge - making it work. Our ancestors acquired their knowledge by watching. They observed nature, the seasons, animals, tides, the sun and the stars.

They saw lightening strikes start fires, burn innocent wildebeests and found that they tasted better cooked than raw. So they developed 'food technology'.

They got a taste for burnt animals and wanted more; so they got together in gangs and developed sophisticated signals and signs to help them with the hunt all sorts of creatures. They called this 'communications technology'. They also developed 'weapons technology' (or spears) to avoid the stress of hand-to-paw combat.

'Transport technology' was not their strong point at this time (it mostly involved running) so they fenced off a bit of land, herded a few creatures together, built huts and grew some crops to feed themselves and the animals. To help with this they created 'building technology' and 'agricultural technology'.

Every time they acquired a little bit more knowledge they created a new technology to go with it. "This is fun," they thought, "with each new technology life gets a little easier." There was a general feeling of euphoria around (the 'brewing technology' helped), and they decided to really go for it.

They hadn't done that much damage up to this point (although the wildebeests have a few words to say on this matter), but being humans, they got greedy.

And that's when the problems started.

Curiosity is part of the human condition isn't it? The quest for answers to life, the universe and why three buses always arrive at once.

Why does the sun come up in the morning mummy? Shut up Copernicus and eat your wildebeest!

Well Copernicus got it right in the end; the earth (and a few other innocent lumps of rock) did go round the sun and not vice versa as his mum thought. The technologists got to work on his theory and eventually put a man on the moon. Without which achievement we probably wouldn't have non-stick saucepans (god bless 'em).

There's no stopping us. We have an insatiable desire to KNOW things. Well there's nothing wrong with that, if its good enough for cats its good enough for me. We seem to have a similar need to do something with this knowledge that we acquire. In olden times (before 1930) we had a tendency to do generally useful things with that knowledge.

 We had a whale of a time with electromagnetics, making wirelesses, vacuum cleaners, telephones and the rest. They were (mostly) things that we'd been crying out for - you could tell this from the adverts.

But more recently the technologists ran out of 'really useful' applications for scientific discoveries and put their minds to inventing things that we didn't actually know that we needed.

Like: the digital watch, car alarms, genetically modified tomatoes, cloning, the electric toothbrush, anti-bacterial chopping boards, mobile phones, and all the rest.

No, emphatically no!

Well perhaps sometimes. Yes definitely sometimes!

I suppose it depends on your point of view. If you have one.

Ask the wildebeest.

Basically its something we do and probably won't stop until . . .

Being the selfish creatures that we are, we usually think of something as 'bad' if it does us harm. And that is the heart of the problem - if it does 'us' harm. By 'us' we usually mean ourselves, our immediate family, friends, possibly our neighbours (but not always), maybe our fellow citizens, perhaps Europe, the third world has got Oxfam - so no worries there, the fish just get on with things (and anyway they've got VERY short memories), the whole population of the planet is just tooo big for me to get my head round at the moment . . . . .

So we don't think of our 3 litre 4-wheel drive turbo charged trip to the out-of-town shopping centre to buy miniature sweetcorn flown in from Thailand as 'bad', because it hasn't hurt 'us' one little bit.

OK you've probably got an inkling that I'm about to suggest that (ever so slightly) is has hurt us a bit.

Who me? I've been thinking this way ever since I climbed down from the . . . .

So let's approach it from a different point of view. Instead of asking if a technology is 'bad' let's ask ourselves if it's good!

How will this help?

Look at it this way (please). When we do something 'good' (donating to a charity, rescuing a kitten from a tree, pulling a thorn out of a lions paw) we get a warm feeling inside. We've got our own in-built reward system. This is probably part of the reason that politicians kiss babies, rich rock stars organise charity concerts and Maggie Thatcher saved the Falklands.

The more 'good' things we do - the better we feel, as opposed to doing something that we think is 'not that bad' (i.e. it hasn't done us any noticeable harm) it leaves us with a feeling of indifference.

Maybe this is where the technologists went wrong. They didn't think, "is this a 'good' technology", they thought "will it do 'us' (remember who 'us' is) any harm?".

Let's keep making the same mistakes.

We've established that we're not going to stop, that every nanosecond (or so) we're going to invent a new technology to replace a pretty good existing one.

Let's look back at a few.

1. In Victorian London they had a problem with their transport technology. The place was getting busier and busier and the favoured way of getting around town was by horse driven transport (Sinclair not yet having invented the C5).

The problem, to put it crudely (but honestly) was horse manure. Mountains of the stuff, much more than you could mulch a rose bush with!

Just in the nick of time, along came a new transport technology. The internal combustion engine. Problem solved; of course there would be a few redundancies in the manure shovelling business (but they could always get jobs as taxi drivers) and a lot of spare horses (but a ready market in France).

Free from the foul smelling pollution, London (or the 'smoke' as it came to be known) could get on with its business.

2. In the 1950's the technologists saw a great opportunity to replace the dirty smoke belching power stations with a new technology so amazing that it had the potential to give us virtually FREE electricity (don't laugh). The nuclear power industry was born, totally safe, pollution free and cheap beyond belief.

Of course they were right about the 'beyond belief' bit.

3. In the 1960's when the space race was on the Russians and the Americans came across the same problem, that of writing in space. The standard ballpoint pen didn't work in zero gravity. So the Americans with their usual style got to work on the problem (they threw money at it) and invested millions of dollars and hours developing a pen that you could pump pressure into and would write even when it was upside down. And they succeeded.

The Russians gave their astronauts pencils.

So replacing one technology with another doesn't always bring benefits. Examples 1 and 2 above made things worse and example 3 cost the Americans a lot of money.

How could things have been different? Thinking is the key. Not diving into it, but thinking first. Thinking 'is this good?'

Alternative anything offers a substitute for the conventional way of doing things.

There, that was easy wasn't it?

So alternative technology simply offers a substitute for the normal, generally accepted way of doing things?

No.

In the examples above we introduced new technologies. Strictly speaking they were alternatives to the existing ones (cars instead of horses, atoms instead of coal and pump up biros instead of pencils) but remember we're looking for something that does good.

Some of the technologies that humankind has come up with have left the earth and society in a worse state than before. It's that that we're looking for an alternative to.

At last a definition!

"Alternative Technology offers a substitute for Conventional Technology that improves conditions for the earth and it's population. "

It's a lot more challenging than conventional technology, because it involves a lot more thinking.

It involves the theft of ideas (from existing technologies and those of the past).

It means caring, caution and calculation.

It's about problem solving, creativity and not taking the easy option.

It can be high tech or low tech.

It's about Sustainability.