This site was created by Michael Slattery. Some of my other Internet activities are listed here: User:Michael at http://interdb.org You can send me email at: slatteraz@gmail.com

The heading "Mental Conviviality" covers the domain of mental phenomena considered as tools or artefacts. It treats of ideas, conceptual schemes and language systems from the point of view whereby they can be regarded as "tools." Illich, like others before him, noted that ideas, conceptual (...)

The term Social Conviviality refers to an approach in which social constructs such as social systems and social organisations are considered to be tools or mechanisms for the achievement of social and individual ends. As mentioned elsewhere on this site, in the article "Ideas as Tools", it has (...)

A Short History of the Criticism of Industrial Technology up to Illich In the mid-1970s Ivan Illich presented his idea of "convivial tools" as an alternative to the system of "industrial tools," which he criticised. The principal roots of the ideas of "convivial tools" are thus to be found in (...)

Early Life and Education Ivan Illich was born in Vienna in 1926. His father, a Croatian civil engineer, was Roman Catholic, while his mother was from a Sephardic Jewish family. Illich was expelled from the Piaristengymnasium in Vienna by the occupying Nazis in 1941 because of his (...)