New article: this time, we use Heidegger to explain why the "it's just a tool" line that often comes up in tech is so very silly:

[mrsbeanbag@ieji.de]

@iris_meredith i have been thinking about this very claim lately, and my conclusion is that it isn't *even* a tool. a tool is something you control, and with practice, master. you don't control an LLM. you just sort of, ask it, and it obeys, more or less, according to its interpretation of what you asked for. that's not a tool, it's a servant.

[roboro@mastodon.social]

@iris_meredith This was a fantastic read. I loved your illustration of Heidegger's present-at-hand and ready-to-hand. This article is a great application of philosophy to technology and software development and really helps to highlight the choices we make and how they shape us. I appreciate the balance that you find navigating the legitimacy of choosing to use problematic tools. Thanks for sharing.

[xenogon@sunny.garden]

@iris_meredith

This seems very very close to "The original sin of design is control".

I've found that concept an essential touchstone since I first heard it maybe 10 years ago.

I don't know who said it originally and I thought it was a reasonably widely known concept amongst the types of people we might find on fedi, but when I search the web for it i get nothing.

[hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com]

@mrsbeanbag @iris_meredith No, I’d argue it’s still a tool, but end users are part of the input/output of the tool, the people who are wielding it are only the ones making it.

[hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com]

@KatS @iris_meredith Huh, I didn’t expect to see Tailwind mentioned here but I guess it aligns with a recent rant of mine about it: friendica.mrpetovan.com/displa…

[andydearden@mastodon.green]

@iris_meredith I do wnder whether Bruno Latour should also be cited in this argument. Are these gestalts equivalent to actants?

[jpshoer@mastodon.social]

@iris_meredith Great essay! I've been thinking about these sorts of issues, too, from the perspective of an aerospace engineer.

"Technology is neither good nor evil, it's how you use it! Now, we shall proceed with developing this new technology for which the use case was defined in advance, and the use case is....uh...."

[_ryekdarkener_@mastodon.social]

@iris_meredith

Good point. Essentially, it boils down to the fact that using the object intelligently turns it into ‘just a tool’ and a part of our (expanded) cultural existence.
For people who use forks without any interest in or knowledge of their specific capabilities, a fork is simply a magical device that either helps or seems threatening – in a way that people do not want to understand.

[gudenau@hachyderm.io]

@iris_meredith Yeah, if industry is good at one thing it's good at skirting responsibility. It's a thing everywhere, the government is meant to push back against it. The food industry and the FDA, big oil and the EPA, big tech and the GDPR, etc..

[daseinsappeal@troet.cafe]

@iris_meredith Aaah! Finally someone scratching where it used to itch for thirty years. Thanks!

[db@magrathea.space]

@mrsbeanbag @iris_meredith I think that’s why certain kinds of people love them so much.

[dandean@indieweb.social]

@iris_meredith I appreciate the way you piece together the way a tool’s design influences thinking, actions, and the resulting reality we bring into the world.

[iris_meredith@mastodon.social]

@AndyDearden
I've not read a terrible amount of Latour, but definitely worth a thought.

[bignose@fosstodon.org]

@voltagex has left me no option, I have to repeat one of my favourites:

“What part of “gestalt” don't you understand?”

i'll see myself out, thanks

@iris_meredith

[bignose@fosstodon.org]

Thank you @iris_meredith, this is very timely given this week's terrible resolution by the #Debian project (to explicitly take no stand against any of the harms of #LLM “just a tool”).

I fervently wish that this was understood by more of the people voting in that resolution. The fight continues, I hope.

[bignose@fosstodon.org]

in case someone doesn't know what I'm referring to: this resolution https://www.debian.org/vote/2026/vote_002 was decided this week.

@iris_meredith

[andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it]

@iris_meredith This is the kind of thing I bookmark for later reference.

[diazona@techhub.social]

@iris_meredith Interesting, although I don't think I agree with the premise of what "just a tool" means. (Or at least that's not the way I would use the phrase.) Still, there are some insightful points in there.

[paco@infosec.exchange]

@mrsbeanbag I think the blog and the reasoning in it is really good. I’m going to use it in the future. But I also agree with you that LLMs really strain the definition of “tool”.

The same person giving the same LLM the same exact input more than once to solve the same problem more than once will get 2 different outputs (probably similar, but not at all identical). That makes it a strange “tool,” indeed.

And there’s so much cargo culting around just the right phrases to prevent this problem or that problem. People can develop expertise with a tool. But LLMs’ non-determinism limit the value of past experience with respect to future performance.

@iris_meredith

[elexia@catcatnya.com]

@iris_meredith this isn't really gonna make us feel different about LLMs (which we don't and don't intend to use) but it is making us more seriously consider the implications of having a gun (which we currently do not but have wanted to, it just wasn't enough of a priority and financially unviable). while it's certainly not a new idea that carrying one does influence the wielder, we should consider that simply being aware of it doesn't make us immune to such influence. not that we would be allowed to carry a gun here anyway.