Conviviality
Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (1973): “I choose the term ‘conviviality’ to designate the opposite of industrial productivity… autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment.”
A convivial tool extends what a human can do. An industrial tool replaces what a human does. The distinction is control.
The bicycle is Illich’s paradigm case. “Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process.” The bicycle amplifies the rider’s metabolic energy. The rider controls the machine. The rider can repair it, modify it, understand it completely.
The automobile requires centralized production, specialized repair, fuel infrastructure, licensing, insurance. The driver operates the machine but doesn’t control the system. When the system fails — traffic jams, gas shortages, mechanical breakdown — the driver is helpless.
Convivial tools are:
- Accessible: Available to each person without gatekeepers
- Understandable: Their operation can be fully grasped
- Modifiable: Users can adapt them to their purposes
- Non-exclusive: Their use doesn’t restrict others’ use
A pen is convivial. A printing press, less so. A blog post, somewhat. A platform algorithm that decides who sees what, not at all.
Illich proposed that tools pass through two watersheds. First: the tool improves the domain significantly. The first cars made travel faster. The first schools taught literacy. The first hospitals cured diseases.
Second: the tool is over-applied and creates “radical monopoly.” Cars reshape cities to require cars. Schools credential so pervasively that self-education loses value. Hospitals medicalize conditions that used to be just life.
After the second watershed, the tool no longer serves users. Users serve the tool.
The question for any technology: Does this make me more capable, or more dependent? Can I use it creatively, or only as prescribed? Does my skill increase through use, or does my skill become unnecessary?
A tool that deskills its user is an industrial tool wearing convivial clothing.
Go Deeper
Books
- Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich — The 1973 source. Short, radical, still provocative.
- Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich — Companion piece applying the same logic to education.
- Medical Nemesis by Ivan Illich — On iatrogenesis: when medicine harms more than heals.
- The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul — Illich’s intellectual predecessor on technique as autonomous force.
Related: [[craft]], [[maintenance]], [[tools]]