>Convivial tools are tools that support "autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment." > Convivial tools are ones that invite us to be creative and responsible, rather than deferring responsibility to someone else. - [[Governable Spaces]] --- From [[Lifehouse]]: > Convivial tools derive a good part of their appeal from the fact that they can be tinkered with. Like an old bicycle or waterwheel, they can't be damaged too badly by experimenting with them, and at worst, if you should happen to destroy one in an attempt to adapt or modify it, you ought to be able to scavenge others of the same sort and start all over again. Even better, they educate people in how to use them, tending to be organised in modular subsystems that, if not quite self-explanatory, yield a diagram of their functioning to a little patient investigation. > > Because tools like these lower the risk of looking foolish, or wrecking something delicate, expensive and irreplaceable, not simply the technically inclined, but a greater proportion of the Lifehouse community will be comfortable engaging with them. And this open and unintimidating quality is what pushes any truly convivial system past formal accessibility toward active invitationality. Under such circumstances, competence with the systems that undergird common life ceases to be a matter of a jealously cultivated exclusivity, and is instead broadly distributed throughout the community.