Berry's Nine Criteria for Tools

Berry's nine criteria are not a veto on new tools. They are a standard that asks whether the tool serves the community or whether the community serves the tool. Berry arrived at them not through abstract principle but through decades of watching specific tools transform specific communities and specific practices, on specific land, with consequences that arrived slowly enough to be invisible until they were irreversible. The criteria hold that a new tool should be cheaper than what it replaces; smaller in scale; do work that is clearly and demonstrably better; use less energy; be repairable by an ordinary person; come from a small local shop; not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists; not replace or displace human labour while claiming to do what humans cannot do; and be purchasable and repairable by ordinary people. The most searching