Community technology

Community technology, community tech for short, is both the work to increase community access to technology, as well as to design and develop tools that meet community needs.

The movement originated in the 1990s around the work of community technology centers and national organizations with federal policy initiatives around broadband, information access, education, and economic development.

In the early 2000s the term shifted towards community-led design and development processes.

History
In 1995, Karl Hess published the book Community Technology, documenting his efforts in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington D.C. to use technologies like aquaponics and solar power at the local level to advance community self-sufficiency.

Hess critiqued the extreme concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the wealthy and saw community technology as a way to disperse and redistribute power.

"'The most powerful point to be made for community technology efforts is that when people take any part of their lives back into their own hands for their own purposes, the cause of local liberty is advanced; and such liberty, in turn, seems the strongest base on which to found a decent culture of mutual aid and humane purpose.'"