Tools for Conviviality

Ivan Illich's 1973 argument that industrial tools have passed a 'second threshold' where they become counterproductive — the car creates more traffic than it solves; medicine creates iatrogenesis; schools inhibit learning — and that convivial tools that enhance personal autonomy must replace them.

Creates the conceptual framework for counterproductive technology — Illich's argument that tools cross a threshold from enhancing human capability to undermining it (and that institutions exist to hide this fact) is the most rigorous theoretical framework for technology criticism.