He predicted and theorized
free software 10 years before it happened in Tools for Conviviality, made the most obvious and needed critic of education and hospitals alone against the Zeitgeist, studied step by step a lot of field of society to find patterns to simplify understanding.
He created simple concepts that everyone should know —- counter productivity, vernacular, iaotrogenic, radical monopoly, conviviality, poverty vs. misery etc.
He is much more pragmatic than all his leftists colleagues. He might not go very deep in economics but at least he’s not a basic marxist. He might not go as deep as Jacques Ellul in his critics of technology, but at least he is very understandable, anyone can be inspired by his books. I read most of Illich writings at 19 years old and it stayed with me for years
crabmusket · 1h ago
You might enjoy a newsletter called The Convivial Society, which is heavily influenced by Illich.
I'm just starting Tools For Conviviality. I suspect that Illich's ideas are underrated because, at least today, most people want more and Illich does not offer that. He offers freedom, I think, in his definition of conviviality... but it seems to be quite clear that offered freedom or comfort, most of us today (I'm not excluding myself from this) prefer comfort.
taylorlapeyre · 2h ago
I agree with you. Is it perhaps because of his religious background (he was a Catholic priest)? For much of the last couple decades, there has been an anti-religious streak in the educational mainstream universities.
mousethatroared · 53m ago
Half agree.
The other half, as a very conservative Catholic, conservative Catholics are neglecting our great teachers like Dorothy Day.
edwardbernays · 14m ago
Could that perhaps be a reaction to an anti-intellectualism streak in the mainstream religious narrative for the last couple decades?
ants_everywhere · 2h ago
This was a whole cottage industry during the cold war, kind of like it is now that we're in another sort of cold war.
The Soviets would fund anyone applying Marxist thought to this or that. There may be some interesting ideas for those willing to sort out the chaff, but for the most part you know exactly what they're going to say if you're already familiar with the propaganda that came before.
xg15 · 1h ago
Well, was it wrong what they said?
ants_everywhere · 1h ago
Yes. In general that's why you resort to propaganda and polemics rather than giving a formal argument that can be disproved.
profsummergig · 2h ago
Computers could hardly do anything back then. Mostly backend data processing.
Yet this speech could have been written today.
Intriguing.
ttoinou · 2h ago
Similar to Guy Debord in The Society of Spectacle, what he wrote witnessing the beginning of TV and mass cinema applies for us in 2025, 100 fold
He predicted and theorized free software 10 years before it happened in Tools for Conviviality, made the most obvious and needed critic of education and hospitals alone against the Zeitgeist, studied step by step a lot of field of society to find patterns to simplify understanding.
He created simple concepts that everyone should know —- counter productivity, vernacular, iaotrogenic, radical monopoly, conviviality, poverty vs. misery etc.
He is much more pragmatic than all his leftists colleagues. He might not go very deep in economics but at least he’s not a basic marxist. He might not go as deep as Jacques Ellul in his critics of technology, but at least he is very understandable, anyone can be inspired by his books. I read most of Illich writings at 19 years old and it stayed with me for years
I'm just starting Tools For Conviviality. I suspect that Illich's ideas are underrated because, at least today, most people want more and Illich does not offer that. He offers freedom, I think, in his definition of conviviality... but it seems to be quite clear that offered freedom or comfort, most of us today (I'm not excluding myself from this) prefer comfort.
The other half, as a very conservative Catholic, conservative Catholics are neglecting our great teachers like Dorothy Day.
The Soviets would fund anyone applying Marxist thought to this or that. There may be some interesting ideas for those willing to sort out the chaff, but for the most part you know exactly what they're going to say if you're already familiar with the propaganda that came before.
Yet this speech could have been written today.
Intriguing.
Or take The Machine Stops from 1909.