Tool & User

Throughout the time in the working group, I was particularly struck at the attention paid to the relationship between tool and user. Two motifs emerged for me from the various contexts in which this relationship was theorized.

First is this notion of positioning between tool and user. There are several stances for tool and user that were played with throughout the time. In my observations, that of “use” remained the most dominant one. (Even the term “user” reflects this). It speaks to how tools gain meaning, or, further, the relationship between this network of tools of an actor such as the biological form (hands, senses, etc.) and tools fashioned from materials outside of us. I am wondering if tools exist outside of being acted upon. Through use, do these tools become extensions of the body, and if so, when does this coupling begin? Perhaps, tools begin with the identification of its possibility, because we have begun to observe some artefacts of its form? In short, are there tools aside from users?

Second is the notion of “mathematical tool”. The character of the interaction extends from the relationship between tool and actor. So when, if ever, does that relationship become distinctly mathematical? I am thinking a lot about the remote control example, an object not (assumedly) structured as a “mathematical” tool, but the relationship become such. I wonder, using the tool, artefacts, signs framework, how we can say that a tool is, in its very form, mathematical without some reference to an actor observing that form. Part of that comes from my interactions with the remote control; I will never interact with a remote control in the same way. Through this experience, I have brought forth remote controls as mathematical tools, but I’m not sure I would say that the object had this form in absence of this interaction.