← See the axis · Relation to technology
ArgumentNot the tool, the use
The same feed serves a free mind's curiosity and a tired evening's torpor: it is the use that decides.
Supports Instrumentalism
- The same knife cuts bread and wounds, the same fire warms and destroys. An instrument takes its meaning from the hand that holds it and the end that hand pursues. Technology is no exception to this rule.
- The feed you were scrolling tonight, another uses to learn a language, keep in touch with loved ones, organize mutual help. It is not the object that has changed, it is the intention and the measure brought to it.
- To pin the blame on the device has something convenient about it: it is to call oneself driven when one has merely given in. Yet to acknowledge myself free in my use is also to give myself the power to change it, and to turn my effort toward .
Therefore So to place the remedy on the side of use is not naivety: it is to refuse to surrender myself to an object, and to keep my grip on what is truly mine.
How far does this reasoning convince you?
Not at all
Entirely
Deepenings
Calling oneself driven
- To make the object the cause of my conduct is to borrow the to excuse myself: « it wasn't me, it was the feed ». But this excuse has a price: it strips me in advance of the power to do otherwise.
How far does this reasoning convince you?
Not at all
Entirely
Put to the test
Objection