#ivan-illich — Public Fediverse posts

@scuolalibertaria :ecoanarchism_heart: https://mastodon.uno/@scuolalibertaria

#ScuolaLibertaria #GustavoEsteva #IvanIllich

Dans le journal Le Devoir, Stéphane Pisani propose une très belle présentation de la pensée d'Ivan Illich, critique des sociétés industrielles et un-e des précurseur-es des idées la décroissance conviviale. Je vous en recommande fortement la lecture.

https://www.ledevoir.com/actualites/le-devoir-de/972938/repenser-abondance-lumiere-ivan-illich

#decroissance #convivialité #capitalisme #energie #ivanillich #philosophie

“Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are”*…

As we head into the weekend, some food for thought…

A decade ago, the world was, at once, both the seed of today and a very different place: In what was considered one of the biggest political upsets in American political history (and the fifth and most recent presidential election in which the winning candidate lost the popular vote), Donald Trump was elected to his first term. The U.K. chose Brexit. The stock market finished strong, with the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq reaching new highs. (In the 10 years that have followed, the Dow has risen about 150%; the S&P 500, roughly 400%; and the NASDAQ has roughly sextupled.)

It was a big year for pop culture, marked by Beyoncé’s Lemonade, the massive Pokémon Go craze, and the rise of Netflix with Stranger Things, the Rio Olympics, and the loss of icons like David Bowie and Prince.

It was also a big year in tech: Russian hacking and disinfo (especially on Facebook) was a huge story– as was Apple’s elimination of the headphone jack in the iPhone 7. Theranos collapsed; and Wells fargo opened millions of accounts for customers without those customers’ permission (for which they were sunsequently fined $3 Billion). And Virtual Reality was everywhere (in the promises/offers from tech companies), but nowhere in the market. TikTok was launched in 2016, but hadn’t yet become the phenomenon (and avatar of algorithmly-driven feeds) that it has become. And in the course of 2016, artificial intelligence made the leap from “science fiction concept” to “almost meaningless buzzword” (though in fairness, 2016 was the year that Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo program triumphed against South Korean Go grandmaster Lee Sedol).

Back in 2016, the estimable Alan Jacobs was pondering the road ahead. In a piece for The New Atlantis, he coined and discussed a series of aphorisms relevant to the future as then he saw it. He begins…

Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The apho-
rist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion
is a conviction that he is wiser or more intelligent than his readers.
– W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger, The Viking Book of Aphorisms

Author’s Note: I hope that the statement above is wrong, believing that certain adjustments can be made to the aphoristic procedure that will rescue the following collection from arrogance. The trick is to do this in a way that does not sacrifice
the provocative character that makes the aphorism, at its best, such a powerful form of utterance.

Here I employ two strategies to enable me to walk this tightrope. The first is to characterize the aphorisms as “theses for disputation,” à la Martin Luther — that is, I invite response, especially response in the form of disagreement or correction. The second is to create a kind of textual conversation, both on the page and beyond it, by adding commentary (often in the form of quotation) that elucidates each thesis, perhaps even increases its provocativeness, but never descends into coarsely explanatory pedantry…

[There follows a series of provocations and discussions that feel as relevant– and important– today as they were a decade ago. He concludes…]

… Precisely because of this mystery, we need to evaluate our technologies according to the criteria established by our need for “conviviality.”

I use the term with the particular meaning that Ivan Illich gives it in Tools for Conviviality [here]:

I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among per-
sons, 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 con-
sider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal inter-
dependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in
any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount
of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates
among society’s members.

In my judgment, nothing is more needful in our present technological moment than the rehabilitation and exploration of Illich’s notion of conviviality, and the use of it, first, to apprehend the tools we habitually employ and, second, to alter or replace them. For the point of any truly valuable critique of technology is not merely to understand our tools but to change them — and us…

Eminently worth reading in full, as its still all-too-relevant: “Attending to Technology- Theses for Disputation,” from @ayjay.bsky.social.

Pair with a provocative piece from another fan of Illich, L. M. Sacasas (@lmsacasas.bsky.social): “Surviving the Show: Illich And The Case For An Askesis of Perception.”

[Image above: source]

* Sherry Turkle

###

As we thnk about tech, we might recall that it was on this date in 1946 that an ancestor of today’s social networks, streaming services, and AIs, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), was first demonstrated in operation.  (It was announced to the public the following day.) The first general-purpose computer (Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being programmed and re-programmed to solve different problems), ENIAC was begun in 1943, as part of the U.S’s war effort (as a classified military project known as “Project PX“); it was conceived and designed by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania, where it was built.  The finished machine, composed of 17,468 electronic vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints, weighed more than 27 tons and occupied a 30 x 50 foot room– in its time the largest single electronic apparatus in the world.  ENIAC’s basic clock speed was 100,000 cycles per second (or Hertz). Today’s home computers have clock speeds of 3,500,000,000 cycles per second or more.

source

Ivan Illich, 100 ans - Rencontres internationales
samedi 24 à 9h, Académie du Climat, Paris
https://www.agendamilitant.org/a7450 #ivanillich #convivialité #productiviste #critiquedesinstitutions

Health is not a deliverable commodity and care does not come out of a system.
-- Ivan Illich

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #IvanIllich #Commoditization #Health #Healthcare

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Pictographs #RockArt #DefianceHouse #LakePowell #Utah

"This follows a pattern that institutional theorist Ivan Illich spent his career documenting: institutions form around liberating ideas, then gradually transform those ideas into tools of control, all while maintaining the original liberating rhetoric. The people within these institutions can't see the transformation because recognizing it would require questioning their own position within the power structure."

#BurningTree, 2025

https://gist.github.com/burningtree/d4aa172470293bdf2939c993cf48bbd4

#IvanIllich

si se lo perdieron...

El convivio del software libre
Más allá de los aspectos puramente técnicos, usar un tipo de tecnología u otro puede mejorar la vitalidad social.
#IvanIllich

https://sursiendo.org/2025/11/el-convivio-del-software-libre/

Autonomies: **Ivan Illich: Rebirth of Epimethean Man**

https://autonomies.org/2025/12/ivan-illich-rebirth-of-epimethean-man/

As yet another COP gathering closes, with no end in sight to increasing carbon emissions, to the glee of the fossil fuel industries; as the promise of a “green” energy transition unmasks its own inexhaustible demands on an expanding, violent … Continue reading →

#Commentary #IvanIllich

El convivio del software libre

Más allá de los aspectos puramente técnicos, usar un tipo de tecnología u otro puede mejorar la vitalidad social.

Antes que moralizar la decisión sobre qué sistema operativo (Windows, macOs o Linux) utilizar, el autor, de forma ensayística, ofrece una caja de herramientas a fin de confrontar las inercias corporativas que moldean nuestra relación con la digitalidad

#SoftwareLibre #IvanIllich

https://sursiendo.org/2025/11/el-convivio-del-software-libre/

"Et si la technique n'était pas une libération, mais une dépossession ?"
par Alice de Rochechouart :
https://podcast.ausha.co/le-phil-d-actu-philosophie-et-actualite-2/agriculture-et-pesticides-une-philosophie-de-la-depossession
https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/le-phil-dactu-philosophie-et-actualit%C3%A9/99b19ca0-6592-013c-9f2d-0acc26574db2/loi-duplomb-une-philosophie-de-la-d%C3%A9possession/f74c7e82-5a61-409f-bc70-a64626228ff2

#convivialité #dépossession #machinisme #pesticides #légalité #autorité #État #technique #technoCritique #loiDuplomb #Duplomb #souverainetéAlimentaire #pollution #agriBusiness #agroBusiness #agriculture #productivisme #exploitations #exploitationsAgricoles #exploitants #FNSEA #santéPublique #ArnaudRousseau #Rochechouart #Illich #IvanIllich #conseilPodcast

I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied it is hospitality. A practice of hospitality -- recovering threshold, table, patience, listening, and from there generating seedbeds for virtue and friendship on the one hand -- on the other hand radiating out for possible community, for rebirth of community.
-- Ivan Illich (1996 Interview)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #IvanIllich #Community #Friendship #Hope #Hospitality #Virtue

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Sand #Tracks #Iowa

TIL some timely concepts from quite a while ago, inc #convivialtools but especially #radicalmonopoly #IvanIllich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_monopoly

Health is not a deliverable commodity and care does not come out of a system.
-- Ivan Illich

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #IvanIllich #Commoditization #Health #Healthcare

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Rainbow #MississippiRiver #Iowa

📢🚦Oh look, it's 1983 and Ivan Illich discovered that computers are the new overlords making us all robotic drones, stripped of our human essence! 🤖🔊 Apparently, our digital age is just one big cattle ranch, with Illich nostalgically longing for the days when silence was golden and not just a sign your internet is down. 🕰️🤐
http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1983_silence_commons.html #IvanIllich #DigitalOverlords #TechNostalgia #HumanEssence #CattleRanch #1983Reflections #HackerNews #ngated

Silence Is a Commons by Ivan Illich (1983)

http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1983_silence_commons.html

#HackerNews #SilenceIsACommons #IvanIllich #1983 #ThoughtProvoking #SocialCommentary #ReadingRecommendation

@danmcquillan

P.S. My favourite portrait of Ivan Illich, by the great Gisele Freund.

#IvanIllich #GiseleFreund

Städtisches Wachstum und Postwachstum: Thierry Paquot im Circular Metabolism-Podcast

https://wittenbrink.net/staedtisches-wachstum-und-postwachstum-thierry-paquot-im-circular-metabolism-podcast/

Upcoming seminar by @danmcquillan:

"Drawing on Illich's 'Tools for Conviviality', this talk will argue that an important role for the contemporary university is to resist AI. The university as a space for the pursuit of knowledge and the development of independent thought has long been undermined by neoliberal restructuring and the ambitions of the Ed Tech industry. So-called generative AI has added computational shock and awe to the assault on criticality, both inside and outside higher education, despite the gulf between the rhetoric and the actual capacities of its computational operations. Such is the synergy between AI's dissimulations and emerging political currents that AI will become embedded in all aspects of students' lives at university and afterwards, preempting and foreclosing diverse futures. It's vital to develop alternatives to AI's optimised nihilism and to sustain the joyful knowledge that nothing is inevitable and other worlds are still possible. The talk will ask what Illich has to teach us about an approach to technology that prioritises creativity and autonomy, how we can bolster academic inquiry through technical inquiry, workers' inquiry and struggle inquiry, and whether the future of higher education should enrol lecturers and students in a process of collective decomputing."

https://danmcquillan.org/cpct_abstract.html

#IvanIllich #Conviviality #Decomputing #Degrowth #Education #Creativity #Learning #University #AI #LLM

I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied it is hospitality. A practice of hospitality -- recovering threshold, table, patience, listening, and from there generating seedbeds for virtue and friendship on the one hand -- on the other hand radiating out for possible community, for rebirth of community.
-- Ivan Illich (1996 Interview)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #IvanIllich #Community #Friendship #Hope #Hospitality #Virtue

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #LavaFlow #Galapagos #Geology

"Medicine counts in years of life expectancy. Ecology defends life on earth. In all cases, life is a palpable, measurable and manageable entity – a unit of value. a unit of administration, a unit of political power. Life had been abstracted from persons... The word person describes a unique, storied and bounded destiny; a life is an amorphous instance of something unimaginably general and impossibly indistinct – the ultimate resource."

#DavidCayley, 2021

https://www.davidcayley.com/blog/2021/4/1/gaia-and-the-path-of-the-earth

#IvanIllich

"[Ivan] Illich was not invoking these old meanings but pointing to something radically new – a system so total and comprehensive that there could be no ground or standpoint outside it. The very idea of a tool or an instrumental means, he argued, depended on a distinction between that tool and its user. A system in the contemporary sense incorporates its user – he/she becomes part of the system. One uses a hammer but joins a network."

#DavidCayley, 2021

https://www.davidcayley.com/blog/2021/4/1/gaia-and-the-path-of-the-earth

#IvanIllich

The translation of the need for learning into the demand for schooling and the conversion of the quality of growing up into the price tag of a professional treatment changes the meaning of 'knowledge' from a term that designates intimacy, intercourse, and life experience into one that designates professionally packaged products, marketable entitlements, and abstract values.
-- Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #IvanIllich #Education

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Sand #Tracks #Iowa