De-tooling

I saw a social media post recently claiming that AI is the only tool where using the tool less makes you a better user of the tool. Lots of people agreed, and the post got lots of attention. But the claim is flat wrong. Humanity has a long history of creating tools with exactly that property.

At this moment, I am using such a tool. A tool that has become so ubiquitous that we hardly recognize it as a tool at all. A tool that has arguably caused more harm than it has done good.

A chair.

Chairs are ancient, but their widespread adoption didn’t begin until the Renaissance. And it really wasn’t until the industrial revolution that chairs became widely accessible and affordable.¹ While mass-produced chairs may have low price tags, they come with a high cost: the rise of sedentary lifestyles and the health problems associated with prolonged sitting.²

The less you use a chair, the better you are at using it.

I’m reminded of a quote:

Humanity is vastly better at engineering than philosophy: our planes are a good deal more impressive than our notions of what we should travel for; our abilities to communicate definitively outstrip our ideas of how to understand one another.

In every case, we prefer to zero in on the mechanics, on the means and the tools rather than on the guiding question of ends. We are almost allergic to the large first-order enquiries: what are we ultimately trying to do here? What would best serve our happiness? Why should we bother? How is this aligned with the real value?

There’s one thing that social media post got right. AI is a reminder that we desperately need to practice more deliberation when it comes to the tools we use. Humanity’s obsession with convenience is wreaking havoc on our bodies and our minds.

Now for the hard part. Replace “Humanity’s” and “our” in that last sentence with “my.” My obsession with convenience is wreaking havoc on my body and my mind.

I think it’s past time to do some de-tooling.

Header image by Wayee Tan on Unsplash.