(direct quotes are italic)

Foundational for Illich’s perspective is what he called the triadic relationship between persons, tools, and a… collectivity. In other words, they are mutually constitutive by shaping each other. One cannot understand one side without taking the other two into consideration. Technologies are fundamental to the structure of society because 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.

Conviviality vs. industrial productivity / manipulation

I choose the term “conviviality” to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment.

In terms of technologies, he starts out by observing that technologies can be either controlling or liberating. Because, scientific discoveries can be used in at least two opposite ways. The first leads to specialization of functions, institutionalization of values and centralization of power and turns people into the accessories of bureaucracies or machines. The second enlarges the range of each person’s competence, control, and initiative, limited only by other individuals’ claims to an equal range of power and freedom.

Consequently, there are different directions in which tools can be developed. The range within which machines are used to extend human capability and the range in which they are used to contract, eliminate, or replace human functions.

It’s left open here whether the difference lies in the structure of the tools, or the use of the tools. Probably both, in the sense that certain structures encourage certain types of use, without there being a clear determination. An important element of structure for Illich is scale. When an enterprise grows beyond a certain point on this scale, it first frustrates the end for which it was originally designed, and then rapidly becomes a threat to society itself. These scales must be identified and the parameters of human endeavors within which human life remains viable must be explored.

Tools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user. An example he uses is the telephone. It brings people together, but it is in itself passive. It doesn’t do anything unless called upon. Another one might be public transport, sports facilities, and so on.

In principle the distinction between convivial and manipulatory tools is independent of the level of technology of the tool. What has been said of the telephone could be repeated, point by point, for the mails or for a typical Mexican market. Each is an institutional arrangement that maximizes liberty, even though in a broader context it can be abused for purposes of manipulation and control.

In this sense, it’s less, as Cory Doctorow puts it, what technology is, in some abstract sense, but what it does, and to whom it does it. However, Illich is perhaps less individualistic; it’s always about the triadic relationship, how technology mediates between the person and the world at large, and how the three constitute one another.

Balance between scale & conviviality

It is a mistake to believe that all large tools and all centralized production would have to be excluded from a convivial society. … What is fundamental to a convivial society is not the total absence of manipulative institutions and addictive goods and services, but the balance between those tools which create the specific demands they are specialized to satisfy and those complementary, enabling tools which foster self-realization. The first set of tools produces according to abstract plans for men in general; the other set enhances the ability of people to pursue their own goals in their unique way.

Here is another distinction. This time, it’s less about production, but about needs/consumption. Manipulative tools create the demands they are designed to fill themselves (artificial needs to stimulate consumption), whereas convivial tools help with the open-ended self-realization of people.

What is fundamental to a convivial society is not the total absence of manipulative institutions and addictive goods and services, but the balance between those tools which create the specific demands they are specialized to satisfy and those complementary, enabling tools which foster self-realization. The first set of tools produces according to abstract plans for men in general; the other set enhances the ability of people to pursue their own goals in their unique way.

But without some degree of degrowth (less AND different) it will not work, because the illusion that a high culture is one that uses the highest possible quantities of energy must be overcome, if we are to get tools into focus. In classical societies power sources were very equally distributed.

Freedom from slavery without becoming a slave to the machine

Illich is not anti-technological at all. Low-technological societies, particularly after the “Neolithic Revolution,” subjected parts of their population to slavery or other forms of serfdom. Tools for a convivial and yet efficient society could not have been designed at an earlier stage of history. We now can design the machinery for eliminating slavery without enslaving man to the machine.

In a way, that was the promise of two “computer revolutions”, first personal computers, then the internet. But today, this rings hollow. The internet, first through social media and now AI, has been deeply rewired. It’s dominated now by non-convivial tools that serve to centralize control and increase the power of managers. Hence, society becomes more authoritarian. The alternative to managerial fascism is a political process by which people decide how much of any scarce resource is the almost any member of society can claim; a process in which they agree to keep limits relatively stationary over a long time, and by which they set a premium on the constant search for new ways to have an ever larger percentage of the population join in doing ever more with ever less. What he calls managerial fascism is what we now call tech fascism. Having been an early environmentalist, Illich saw one vector of fascism the forcefully unequal access to resources and energy.

Information is not a thing, but a relation involving a subject

And, an important point in relation to AI. The world does not contain any information. It is as it is. Information about it is created in the organism through its interaction with the world. To speak about storage of information outside the human body is to fall into a semantic trap. Books or computers are part of the world. They can yield information when they are looked upon. We move the problem of learning and of cognition nicely into the blind spot of our intellectual vision if we confuse vehicles for potential information with information itself. We do the same when we confuse data for potential decision with decision itself.

Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. Fontana, 1975.