Abstract

The essay presents differences and similarities between high-tech and low-tech from the perspective of social processes. Despite the technological convergence of those movements in terms of hardware, the difference is significant as long as it is analysed from the point of view of motivations and relationships between the main social factors of technological development, which will be identified as: society, institutions, industry and science. Ethical consideration will be discussed as the most relevant difference. It will be concluded that despite the fear that ethics could hinder technological development, moral consideration of low-tech does not deny or contradict high-tech paradigms but extends and boosts them. From this perspective, low-tech could be seen as having a chance to become a higher level of development of high-tech.