This is cool:
Appropriate technology (AT) is technology that is designed to be "appropriate" to the context it is intended for - including environmentally, culturally and economically.
The main characteristics of most ATs are that they should be sustainable, small and appropriate. To be effective in practice, it should be easy to maintain. To be effective for many people and have a wide impact, it must be affordable.
It can also be described as the simplest level of technology that can effectively achieve the intended purpose in a given location. In developed countries, the term appropriate technology takes a different meaning, often referring to engineering that takes special consideration of its social and environmental ramifications.
Example:
Ecoladrillo
There has been a drastic rise in the use of plastic bottles over the past couple decades. Ecoladrillo allows otherwise discarded plastic bottles and trash to be used as a raw material for building construction. Figure 1 is a picture of trash that has become common throughout many parts of the world.
The name is taken from ladrillo, a Spanish word for a brick or or paving stone made from baked clay.
Are there examples of this that are electronics? Or software? Maybe there's a way to combine this idea with open source thinking or maybe more better said: hacker culture.
For instance, it would be so cool if we lived in a world where building a phone from a bunch of plug 'n play parts was easy and a wide range of mobile operating systems existed.
Also: do you know any stories that embody this concept?
One issue with electronics is that popular instruction sets targeted by software, like x86, are proprietary, so even if you knew how to build your own (modern) x86 processor (and had the equipment), you couldn’t do so without a license or by breaking patent law.
RISC-V is trying to fix this.
Unfortunately not, I just stumbled across this website
How strong/effective are the material used in building especially through storms and earthquake tremors?