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Convivial Tools Database

This website is a database about people and concepts related to Convivial Tools. Ivan Illich coined the term Convivial Tools in his 1973 book Tools for Conviviality. Convivial Tools can be defined as tools which allow the user to operate with independent efficiency.

This site is a Work in Progress. It replaces my earlier Convivial Tools Encyclopedia. Links to pages that have yet to be created appear as red links. For a look behind the scenes, see Category:Scaffolding. All categories are attached, directly or indirectly, to Category:Root.

The Convivial Tool

The central part of this website seeks to describe the Convivial Tool as a possible object of design and marketing. See the following categories and pages:

• Category:Convivial Design: characteristics of the convivial tool
  • Introductory page: Convivial Tool Characteristics
• Category:Convivial Product: production and marketing of the convivial tool
  • Introductory page: Convivial Product

Thematic Topics

This part of the website situates Convivial Tools within the broader frameworks of alternative technology and social change. See the page Thematic Topics for a summary. The main thematic topics are listed below in approximate order of their chronological development:

• Category:Historical Roots of the ideas behind Convivial Tools - see Historical Roots Narrative
• Category:Post-War Cybernetics - see Post-War Cybernetics
• Category:Sixties Counterculture - see Sixties Counterculture
• Category:Whole Earth - see Whole Earth
• Category:Appropriate Technology - see Appropriate Technology
• Category:Ivan Illich - see Ivan Illich
• Category:Hacker Generation and the invention of the personal computer - see Hacker Generation
• Category:Postmodernism - see Postmodernism
• Category:Web: the web as convivial technology - see The Web
• Category:FOSS - see Free and Open Source Software
• Category:Open Source as a broad movement - see Open Source

The scope of these thematic topics is too wide. Some of the pages have been transferred or copied into my Internet Database and Internet User Guide. Detailed pages on wikis have been transferred to my Wiki History Database.

Is this Website a Wiki?

This website operates under MediaWiki software and thus has the potential to be a Wiki. However, the site is currently configured so that only registered users can edit pages - and there is only one registered user.

See Also

• The precursor of this website, the unfinished and abandoned Convivial Tools Encyclopedia
• Convivial Concepts
• Cooperation Database