Tools disappear from awareness during successful use but surface when they fail.

Evidence

If I am typing a paragraph about Heidegger on the computer, I pay no attention to fingers, keyboard or screen; my concern streams through them to whatever it is I am trying to achieve. But then something goes wrong. The nail bends, or perhaps the whole hammerhead flies off the shaft. Or the computer freezes on me. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 233

Categorization

• DEFINE: The concrete setup for Heidegger’s ready-to-hand vs. present-at-hand distinction.
• XREF: Connects to the computer-freeze version of tool breakdown that anyone who uses software daily has felt. — connects to: Tools and surroundings are grasped through the ends they serve, not in themselves; Failures flip tools from ready-to-hand to present-at-hand objects.; An object’s being shifts between use and detached observation. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 215 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Failures flip tools from ready-to-hand to present-at-hand objects. #corroborates (1.00)
• An object’s being shifts between use and detached observation. #expands (0.88) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 215
• Tool breakdowns reveal the world’s stubbornness and our disorientation. #corroborates (0.85)