The Need for Convivial TooLs
Why are people expressing their unmet needs for creativity now? One explanation is that the tools we have made to “improve” our lives have, in fact, taken creativity away from us. A concern that this might happen was voiced over thirty years ago by Ivan Illich, one of the radical theorists of the 1960s.
Which defined tools as anything made by man. “I use the term ‘tool’ broadly enough to include not only simple hardware such as drills, pots, syringes, brooms, building elements, or motors, and not just large machines like cars or power stations. I also include among tools productive institutions such as factories that produce tangible commodities like corn flakes or electric current and productive systems for intangible commodities such as those which produce ‘education,’‘health,’‘knowledge,’ or ‘decisions’.” (lllich, 20). In other words, all the artifacts of the design process are tools, according to Illich.
Illich described the difference between two basic types of tools. “Convivial toots allow users to invest the world with their meaning, to enrich the environment with the fruits of their visions, and to use them for the accomplishment of a purpose they have chosen. Industrial tools deny this possibility to those who use them, and they allow their designers to determine the meaning and expectations of others.”
He argued in Tools for Conviviality for the exploration and use of convivial is opposed to industrial tools. He described eloquently how a balance between con sumptive and creative activities was necessary for human survival. “People need not only to obtain things, they need, above all, the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others” (Illich, 20).
Tags: Communication