Thoughts
Illich examines the counter-intuitiveness of the advanced “tools” of his period, which ironically defeat their original purpose. For something written in the 70’s, the long-term effects of keeping these systems in place are ever evident present day. And it feels relevant and almost prophetic with today’s post-truth, artificial intelligence landscape.
Illich writes about the societal need to transition away from energy-intensive, centralized systems to human-scale, locally controlled technologies. He defines convivial tools, which enable creative, productive work while preserving human agency and dignity, and industrial tools in contrast, which create dependency, social stratification, and strip people of their autonomy.
Conviviality is the positive interplay between people, their environment and their tools.
In a convivial relationship with tools, its users maintain control over their purpose, pace, and outcomes. These tools encourage skill development, foster creativity, and remain accessible to all. There is a balance between efficiency and human autonomy. The technology serves only to amplify what people can do rather than doing it completely for them.
This is a healthy reminder to consume less and depend less on systems which depend on us consuming more to survive.
The three critical thresholds of tools:
These three thresholds determine whether the tool serves the human or enslaves them.
- Efficiency Threshold - Beyond this point, tools become counterproductive. Take transportation: when transportation systems become so complex that people spend more time dealing with traffic, parking, and maintenance than actually traveling, they have crossed this threshold.
- Equity Threshold - Tools create class divisions between users and non-users. Take education: when educational credentials become more important than actual knowledge and skills, schools have crossed this threshold by creating artificial scarcity that benefits some at the expense of others.
- Creative Threshold - Users become passive consumers rather than active creators. Take medical systems: when medical systems convince people they can no longer understand or care for their own health or the health of their close ones without professional intervention, they have crossed this threshold by undermining human confidence in natural capabilities.
The watershed moments of tool inversion (examples)
Medicine: Hospitals promised health but created illness and medicalized normal life processes
Medicine began to approach the second watershed. Every year medical science reported a new breakthrough. Practitioners of new specialties rehabilitated some individuals suffering from rare diseases. The practice of medicine became centered on the performance of hospital-based staffs. Trust in miracle cures obliterated good sense and traditional wisdom on healing and health care. The irresponsible use of drugs spread from doctors to the general public. The second watershed was approached when the marginal utility of further professionalization declined, at least insofar as it can be expressed in terms of the physical well-being of the largest number of people. The second watershed was superseded when the marginal disutility increased as further monopoly by the medical establishment became an indicator of more suffering for larger numbers of people. After the passage of this second watershed, medicine still claimed continued progress, as measured by the new landmarks doctors set for them-selves and then reached: both predictable discoveries and costs. For instance, a few patients survived longer with transplants of various organs. On the other hand, the total social cost exacted by medicine ceased to be measurable in conventional terms. Society can have no quantitative standards by which to add up the negative value of illusion, social control, prolonged suffering, loneliness, genetic deterioration, and frustration produced by medical treatment.
Education: Schools promised learning but became sorting mechanisms that certify rather than educate
Education, the mails, social work, transportation, and even civil engineering have followed this evolution. At first, new knowledge is applied to the solution of a clearly stated problem and scientific measuring sticks are applied to account for the new efficiency. But at a second point, the progress demonstrated in a previous achievement is used as a rationale for the exploitation of society as a whole in the service of a value which is determined and constantly revised by an element of society, by one of its self-certifying professional élites.
Transportation: Cars promised freedom but created traffic, pollution, suburban sprawl, and dependency on complex infrastructure:
In the case of transportation it has taken almost a century to pass from an era served by motorized vehicles to the era in which society has been reduced to virtual enslavement to the car. During the American Civil War steam power on wheels became effective. The new economy in transportation enabled many people to travel by rail at the speed of a royal coach, and to do so with a comfort kings had not dared dream of. Gradually, desirable locomotion was associated and finally identified with high vehicular speeds. But when transportation had passed through its second watershed, vehicles had created more distances than they helped to bridge; more time was used by the entire society for the sake of traffic than was “saved.”
Path Forward
A fundamental reconstruction of society cannot be postponed indefinitely, as the momentum of industrial development will eventually create irreversible dependencies that eliminate any possible alternatives. Production and decision-making to be decentralized, to place emphasis on efficacy over efficiency. In terms of energy consumption, to take low-energy paths because they preserve social equity ie accessibility by all and keeping the power from the hands of technocratic elites.
New Vocabulary:
Leviathan (noun): a huge and powerful organization or system, often seen as oppressive or controlling