tools for conviviality

Author:: Ivan Illich Tags:#media/book tools society impact of technology technology

• themes:: * Summary::
• notes::
  • Preface - Introduction

    • scientific discoveries can be used in at least two opposite ways. The first leads to specialization of functions, institutionalization of values and centralization of power and turns people into the accessories of bureaucracies or machines. The second enlarges the range of each person’s competence, control, and initiative, limited only by other individuals’ claims to an equal range of power and freedom

      • empowering people only in context of institution vs. empowering individuals
    • conviviality
  • I - Two Watersheds

    • People have lost the right to declare themselves sick; society now accepts their claims to sickness only after certification by medical bureaucrats

      • everything is a bureaucracy
      • an ”institutions” = something with the right to define the words and terms that dictate society ^Qcd58tt01
    • we try to cure things using the same tools that created the problems, we only address the symptoms not the cause
    • Every technology has 2 watershed moments
      • 1 is clearly good and helps indiscriminately
      • 2 marks when marginal value is negative to society when growth is out of control
  • II - Convivial Reconstruction
    • “Tools are intrinsic to social relationships” ^q5TuCrTlw
    • “cost of roles exceed cost of production” ^nDggRsp2U
    • summary:
      • most people made into ”consumers” tools work for them rather than tools they work with
      • institutions define values that society adopts all under levels of professionalization that are standard
        • efficient to standardize but makes people dependent on institutions
      • “Tools are intrinsic to social relationships” ^q5TuCrTlw: individual sees himself through how he uses and is used. Convivial tools maximize individual creative direction in output
        • ex: constraint by designers vs. flexible for end-user to decide
        • ex: phone and hand tools vs. cars, health institutions, education system
        • basically wants to maximize individual direction and control over their lives through controlling their tools
          • want a future absent of society/institutions, individual liberty is the ultimate goal [[unabomber manifesto#^z3-X9Ypw8]]
      • marking of 2nd watershed when “cost of roles exceed cost of production” ^nDggRsp2U
      • can have balance of convivial and not
      • highlights how western intervention for industrial output in 3rd world countries is bad, would not like Michael Shellenberger
      • infinite growth bent is source of problems (ex: higher speed, more medicine, etc.)
      • tools now designed to output “professional energies” which are measured in quanta. Less quanta = bad and have to achieve the whole to have any benefit
        • ex: completing some of school is worse than not doing any school at all because you are “dropout”
          • interesting enough this has become sort of badge of honor for people that reject the idea of institutions from the get-go, like peter thiel
    • claim deriding managers of society seems eerily familiar to the [[unabomber manifesto]]
    • Intersection with Poor Economics and Bullshit Jobs? On critique of foreign aid and derision of certain jobs