Reading Ivan Illich’s Tools for Conviviality in the Academic Makerspace

“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. The use of such tools by one person does not restrain another from using them equally. They do not require previous certification of the user. Their existence does not impose any obligation to use them. They allow the user to express his meaning in action.” Ivan Illich - Tools for Conviviality

I feel like I’ve been flailing a little lately, so I will flail here.

The initial intuition was that makerspaces were interesting not because they fostered innovation, but as learning spaces that fostered creativity, independence, collaboration, and community. This was something I grasped in the mid-2000s hanging around the periphery of a hackspace in Vancouver. Not a member of the community myself, just a friend of a member, but excited by so much passion and time being put into projects and the way people in those spaces wanted to share what they learned freely.

So when the opportunity to build a Makerspace came about I did, and it’s been the most rewarding professional thing I’ve done. Huge credit to our staff who really bought into the idea and vision and made it so much better than I could have, especially in terms of creating the kind of culture I knew I wanted but couldn’t have created myself.

And the intuition was correct: focus on creating a welcoming culture, reduce barriers, and let people follow the wild horses of their curiosity. Interesting things happen.

Three years later and we are good at what we do and I really love this weird little space full of people making clothes and music and learning to 3D print.

But it doesn’t feel like enough anymore.

“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. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value.” Ivan Illich - Tools for Conviviality

I say we are a place for learning how to use tools, but what kind of tools? I tell people that there is no hierarchy of tools, that sewing and 3D printing are both equal. But do I really believe that? Do I really believe that practically and ethically sewing and Generative AI are the same?

And what are people learning about technology, exactly? We don’t normally teach how to use tools. Really, what they are learning is how to try something new, fail, find information and help, and try again until you are happy with the result.

But is this enough in a world where technology is actively being used to tear the world apart? As I write this, whole systems of care are being wantonly destroyed by those whose visions for the future are being forced on the rest of us as we wait for the next flood, fire, etc.

And are we not complicit? Are we not, in some ways, sometimes, actually just helping introduce a new generation into the jaws of this machine?

“This combination of widely shared information and competence for using it is characteristic of a society in which convivial tools prevail. The techniques used are easily understood by observing the artisan at work, but the skills employed are complex and usually can be acquired only through lengthy and programmed apprenticeship.” Ivan Illich - Tools for Conviviality

It is in this context that I’ve been reading Ivan Illich’s “Tools for Conviviality”. I’m not going try to explain Illich’s ideas here – this post is already too long. I just wanted to juxtapose some of the highlights I made while reading this book with some of my own thoughts about what I want to do next because I suspect that the many of the ideas here will help when thinking about what tools belong in a makerspace and how to talk about them. I even suspect that Makerspaces, properly understood, might be ideal places to explore Illich’s ideas about technologies.

What would a Makerapace focused just on tools for conviviality look like? Would we change what tools we provided? Would we stop providing access to Virtual Reality since it is mostly a tool for consumption controlled by corporate interests? If so, what about equally corporate but very standard and useful media editors used by artists, etc? Would we only support tools that could be used, understood, owned, and repaired by anyone who wanted to? And how to do any of this while staying true to what a Makerspace is meant to be?