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Technological Design

The term low-technology is a description of those crafts and tools whose inception (typically) predates the Industrial Revolution.

A test for low-technology may be that it can be practiced or fabricated with a minimum of capital investment by an individual or small group of individuals; and that the knowledge of the practice can be completely comprehended by a single individual, free from increasing specialization and compartmentalization.

Colloquially, low-technology (also called lo-tech, an antonym of hi-tech) has also come to be used as a relative description of more modern techniques and designs to show that they are no longer cutting edge. Lo-tech techniques and designs may fall into disuse due to changing socio-economic conditions or priorities.

Examples of Low Technology

Note: Almost all of the entries in this section should be prefixed by the word "traditional."

Weaving produced on non-automated looms or basketry.
Hand wood-working, joinery, coopering, and carpentry.
The trade of shipwright.
The trade of wheelwright.
The trade of the wainwright (wagon builder); the Latin word for the two-wheeled wagon is carpentum, the making of which was a carpenter.

Wright is the agent form of the word wrought, which itself is the original past passive participle of the word "work," now superseded by the weak verb forms "worker" and "worked" respectively.

Blacksmithing, whitesmithing , goldsmithing, silversmithing, and the various other smithing and metal-crafts.
Folk music played on acoustic instruments.
Organic farming and animal husbandry.
Milling in the sense of operating hand-constructed equipment with the intent to either grind grain, or the reduction of timber to lumber as practiced in a saw-mill.
Fulling cloth preparing.
The production of charcoal by the collier, for use in home heating, foundry operations, smelting, the various smithing trades, and for brushing ones teeth in colonial America.
Glass blowing.
Subskills of food preservation:
- Smoking

Salting

Pickling

Drying

Production of various alcoholic beverages:
- Wine - not quite so well preserved fruit juice.

Beer - a way to preserve the calories of grain products from decay.

Whiskey - an improved distilled form of beer.

Flint-knapping.
Masonry as used in castles, cathedrals, fortresses, and root cellars.

Spacius Adicus

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