====== tool ======

A tool is an object that can help an individual to extend its physical abilities, outsource a thinking process, or modify its surrounding. Tools are often referred to as objects that humans use in a physical manner, but their scope can be understood in a much broader sense. In the essay [[Tools for Conviviality]] Ivan Illich understands tools as:

physical hardware, such as a [[hammer_handles|hammer]], a pencil, or a broom;
 
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complex machines, such as a power drill, a bike, a car, or a printer;

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tangible structures, such as a chair or table, a building, roads or a network for electrical power supply;

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intangible structures, such as words or language, software, an educational institution, a political system.

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The relation between an individual and a tool is often affected by the [[law of the instrument]] and strongly influenced by the tool's characteristics and the [[energy in-/output|energy in-/output]]. 

For Ivan Illich tools "are intrinsic to social relationships. An individual relates oneself in action to one's society through the use of tools that one actively masters, or by which one is passively acted upon. To the degree one masters one's tools, one can invest the world with one's meaning; to the degree that one is mastered by one's tools, the shape of the tool determines one's self-image." He proposes the concept of //[[convivial tools]]// which set natural limits to sustain a sound balance between an individual, its tools, and the society it is part of. "Convivial tools are tjose which give each person who uses them the greates opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision. [[Industrial]] tools deny this possibility to those who use them and they allow their designers to determine the meaning and expectations of others. Most tools today can not be used in a convivial fashion." (//[[Tools for Conviviality]]//, Ivan Illich, 1973)