An extension of this is Conway's law which may tend to force us to create work which not only reflects us, but which becomes us.

The relationship with tools becomes a two way street between us and the tool as well as the tools which interpose all of us (humanity).

What might this mean for our relationship with Artificial Intelligence? Will our laziness with respect to thinking turn us into non-thinkers who rely on a tool not actually able to think?

(via me at https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1wjidrf/what_words_could_we_use_to_better_describe_the/pamjdv3/)

Is there a document/source?

If you collect everything, you collect nothing.

This sort of worship of objects extends to those who overbuy notebooks (or other stationery). It's nice to "own" them, but it's even more valuable to write your thoughts in them and use them as the tools they were meant to be.

cross-reference: https://hypothes.is/a/sSgxLMGoEe6j8ccyyMeDTw

another variation of Thoreau on tools... source?

It's Walden. (see: https://hypothes.is/a/b10mJsGoEe6rgteMdxbwKQ)

Joy may have more profitably quoted the earlier Walden piece from p.41: "But lo! men have become the tools of their tools."

There also seems to be the idea of our slow evolution into cybernetic or Borg-like beings hiding not only in Joy's argument, but in Thoreau's. If we integrate so closely with our tools, where do they stop and we end and vice versa?

Compare this with the infamous problem of the ship of Theseus.

p100

This fits into the same sort of framing as Thoreau's earlier quote "men have become the tools of their tools." (p41)

see: https://hypothes.is/a/vooPrPkwEe2r_4MIb6tlFw

p41

This quote is fascinating when one realizes that the Thoreau family business was manufacturing pencils at John Thoreau & Co., one of the first major pencil companies in the United States. Thoreau's father was the titular John and Henry David worked in the factory and improved upon the hardness of their graphite. https://hypothes.is/a/sm7LUpazEe2tTq_GhGiVIg

One might also then say that the man who manufactured pencils naturally should become a writer!

This quote also bears some interesting resemblance to quotes about tools which shape us by Winston Churchill and John M. Culkin see: https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw

reminiscent of the quote:

Life imitates art. We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.<br /> —John M. Culkin, “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan” (The Saturday Review, March 1967) (Culkin was a friend and colleague of Marshall McLuhan)<br /> (see: https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw)

or the earlier version:

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper.<br /> —Henry David Thoreau, Walden, p41 <br /> (see: https://hypothes.is/a/vooPrPkwEe2r_4MIb6tlFw)