CONCEPT
Convivial Tools
Ivan Illich's distinction — adopted by Gorz — between tools that expand autonomous capacity without creating dependency and tools that convert users into components of systems whose purposes are not their own.
Illich argued in Tools for Conviviality (1973) that tools could be evaluated not merely by their productivity but by their relationship to human autonomy. Convivial tools expand the user's capacity for self-directed action without creating dependency or compelling patterns of use she cannot control. Industrial tools create dependency, impose rhythms, and convert the user from autonomous agent into a component of a system whose purposes are not her own. A bicycle is convivial: it expands mobility without creating dependency on a corporation. A car is less convivial: it expands mobility while creating dependency on fuel suppliers, insurance companies, road infrastructure, and the automobile industry's production cycle. Gorz adopted the distinction and extended it into his analysis of work and automation.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The AI coding assistant occupies an ambiguous position in Illich's framework. It is convivial in its immediate effect — it expands what the individual can build — and non-convivial in its structural conditions: the user