On Our Relationship to Our Tools

Illich’s characterisation of tools is worth noting. The importance he gives to the relationship with our tools furnishes design with a strong sense of relevance and responsibility.

Tools are intrinsic to social relationships. An individual relates himself in action to his society through the use of tools that he actively masters, or by which he is passively acted upon. To the degree that he masters his tools, he can invest the world with his meaning; to the degree that he is mastered by his tools, the shape of the tool determines his own self-image. (p.21)

He uses the word “tools” in a broad sense, meaning not only hammers and cars, but really anything that is purposely shaped towards social ends, that is, anything that is designed. “School curricula or marriage laws are no less purposely shaped social devices than road networks.” (p.21) 

A focus on tools is important to Illich because they are easily taken out of our hands under a philosophy of industrial growth and progress.

The illusion prevailed that the machine was a laboratory-made homunculus, and that it could do our labor instead of slaves. It is now time to correct this mistake and shake off the illusions that men are born to be slaveholders and that the only thing wrong in the past was that not all men could be equally so… 

People feel joy, as opposed to mere pleasure, to the extent that their activities are creative; while the growth of tools beyond a certain point increases regimentation, dependence, exploitation, and impotence. (p.20)

Illich proposes a program of what he calls “counterfoil research” to combat our separation from our tools. I think the points he outlines are worthy of consideration for interaction design work.

Counterfoil research must clarify and dramatize the relationship of people to their tools. It ought to hold constantly before the public the resources that are available and the consequences of their use in various ways. It should impress on people the existence of any trend that threatens one of the major balances on which life depends. Counterfoil research leads to the identification of those classes of people most immediately hurt by such trends and helps people to identify themselves as members of such classes. It points out how particular freedom can be jeopardized for the members of various groups which have otherwise conflicting interests. Counterfoil research involves the public by showing that the demands for freedom of any group or alliance can be identified with the implicit interest of all. (p.83)