Smart tools differ from industrial machinery in directly using their users

Evidence

We generalize here the concept of “tool reversibility” from Couldry and Hepp, Mediated Construction, 132. “Tool reversibility” was already anticipated in nineteenth-century workers’ analysis of the factory as making the craftsman into “an animated tool of the management” (cited in Braverman, Labor, 94). In a broad way, today’s critique of tool reversal echoes Illich’s critique of modern tools (Tools, 34–37) and Marx’s account of humankind’s alienation from their productive lives under capitalism (Manuscripts, 112–13). But there is something distinctly shocking about contemporary smart tools’ direct use of their users. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 761

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘tool reversibility’ — the concept that today’s smart tools don’t just reverse the tool-user relation but substantively use the user, a key definitional construct for the data-colonialism frame.
• XREF: Echoes the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article’s interest in infrastructure-becoming-agency, and contrasts with Marx’s factory alienation account. — connects to: AI tools adapt to user preferences in communication. — Joanna Stern, I Am Not a Robot- My Year Using AI to…, 389; “Smart” objects are euphemisms for the extraction of behavioral data. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 747; Tools encode the structures of thought of their makers — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 397

Broader Connections

• AI tools adapt to user preferences in communication. #expands (0.80) — Joanna Stern, I Am Not a Robot- My Year Using AI to…, 389
• Tools encode the structures of thought of their makers #expands (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 397
• “Smart” objects are euphemisms for the extraction of behavioral data. #complicates (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 747