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.
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.[1]
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.