See the axis · Relation to technology

Objection

No tool is neutral

An object designed for a certain behaviour does not wait for use: it already inclines it.

Objects to Instrumentalism

  1. To say « everything depends on the use » assumes the tool is an indifferent means, equally available for better or worse. That is true of a hammer, which lies in the drawer asking nothing of you.
  2. But the feed does not wait in the drawer: endless scrolling, notifications, unpredictable rewards, everything in it is calculated to keep you there. It is not a neutral means you pick up, it is a device that solicits, steers, and makes one behaviour easier than the rest.
  3. An object imposes nothing, granted, but it disposes. The slide invites you to slide down, the bench to sit, the feed to keep scrolling. To believe use entirely free is to forget that the very form of the tool has already steered behaviour before one uses it.

Therefore So « it's not the tool, it's the use » is too quick: the line between tool and use is precisely what the object is built to move.

Possible resolutions of the objection

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