Backflow: Shaped by Modern Tools

The handle of my ax, gripped by my hands all winter to split wood is barely changed by my hands. My palms, on the other hand, are visibly transformed by the ax. Hard callouses form across my palm after months of gripping and swinging. The muscles in my shoulders and arms, too, are reshaped across the cool months of our Pacific Northwest winter. The technology that is "ax" has its impact on me—the work we do together shapes us both, alongside the logs reshaped by this labor. Not just my hands, but my ears and eyes are shaped by this tool, by this work. I learn to recognize the sound of a chop that opens the wood to be split, or the thick thud that indicates resistance. My eyes see the grain of a log, the spots made nearly impenetrable by knots and branches, the spaces where I might best strike. Humans have long known that tool and user exist in a relationship of mutual impact.

We human beings have a complex, though sometimes hidden, relationship with our tools. The use of implements is not unique to humans, but we use tools so abundantly that we are constantly–and significantly–being shaped and reshaped by our tools. From time immemorial it has been important for people to pay attention to the way our tools impact our bodies, our relationships, and our environments. This “paying attention,” in any form, is a type of philosophy. Specifically, when we think with intentionality about the way our tools affect us, we are engaging in philosophies of technology. This blog is a broad and informal invitation to attend to the obscured ways that technology, particularly modern technology, changes the people who use it. The purpose of this blog series is to methodically consider the bi-directional impact of tools and modern technology. Such investigations require attunement to the way modern technology shapes the communities and persons that use it, for better and for worse.

Though modern technology, artificial intelligence included, is starkly different from a lumberjack’s ax, we find ourselves changed by these tools as well. Digital technology and artificial intelligence represent tools that do a great deal of unseen work on the people who use them. Tools influence the world in two directions—toward the log and toward the hands. The callouses we develop from modern technology are often less obvious, more secretive, and create dangerous vulnerabilities. At times, these impacts may be intentional, manipulative, and even nefarious, designed to shape the opinions and decisions of users beneath their awareness. At other times, our tools change us in ways their designers did not intend or anticipate. All tools change the people who use them. Technology alters not just our bodies but also the way we think about ourselves, the way we learn new things, and the way we interact with our environments, our neighbors, our responsibilities, and our political and social systems. 

The Ax: One Moving Part

Tools are typically designed, advertised, and sold for their effective work on the world. One takes up a tool for the primary, overt purpose for which the technology was designed. Many tools are dangerous, and toolmakers provide warnings and guidance to prevent the tool from causing harm. The U.S. Forest Service publishes a 246 page manual for using axes called One Moving Part, with hundreds of safety warnings and concerns, including warnings about posture, blisters, splinters, and expectations about the physical fitness needed to wield an ax.[1] The impression, for those patient enough to read the whole manual, is that when axes are used properly there is no harm to the user. The misuse of tools, and failure to attend to their overt dangers, is not my primary concern in this essay, though there are philosophically interesting questions in that direction as well. 

Even simple tools like hammers and axes hide many of their causal impacts on the people who use these implements. My arthritic shoulder aches when I chop wood, though I have for decades followed the tool’s traditional protocols. The positive muscular, cardiovascular, and skeletal benefits are not mentioned, either. We prefer the world of the tool to be confined to its intended purpose, and operate under the myth that tools have a one-directional flow of influence. Any reverse flow of causation is understood to be either beneficial or a failure of the user to read all 246 pages of the manual. When we think about tools simplistically, focused narrowly on their overt purposes, we miss a whole “secret life of tools,” which is full of both wonders and horrors.

To focus attention on the reverse directionality of tools, I borrow a term from plumbing and electrical work: backflow. The term “backflow” refers to the moment, usually unintentional and often harmful, when liquid or electricity flows in the reverse of its intended direction. This movement is toward the source, and, though it can be done purposefully, it is often indicative of a serious problem. Plumbers and electricians are aware of the functions and dangers of this reversed flow of causation, and take steps to avoid unintentional backflow. I use the concept of “backflow” to help conceptualize the often undetected way that causation runs the opposite direction. When we fall for the myth of one-directional causation, we ignore or minimize the risks, and potential benefits, of the tools we take up. By paying attention to the backflow of tools, we understand better how they might help us live better as tool users. In particular, minding backflow can help us align the tools we use with ethical goals – such as a world that is much more just and humane – and avoid undermining this work. 

I am interested in honing the attention we pay to the hidden and sometimes intentionally masked impact of tools. To identify and contemplate this causal force is not, necessarily, to name it as harmful. The use of an ax teaches me to see and understand the types of trees I interact with, how various types of wood-grain grow and function in each species, and almost innumerable other lessons not mentioned in One Moving Part. When tools change the way we think about the world, they influence us epistemically, a philosophical term that refers to the way we know and understand the world. Epistemic changes can be helpful or harmful. We live better among our many tools when we are aware of the way our thinking is shaped by them.

It is important to clarify that this blog series is not some luddite rejection of modern tools. I am not suggesting that we reject the use of artificial intelligence, or digital technology, but that we use these better and more ethically when we attend to the complexity of their work. All tools shape those who use them, a little or a lot. The hands made nimble with chopsticks are strengthened for other tasks too, shaped not just on the surface but in muscle, reactivity, and steadiness. Some tools require vigilant attention to detail. Using them trains eyes and ears and minds into higher capacities for awareness. Tools are typically not designed for this secondary work; they shape their users in serendipitous ways. Similarly, most tools are not designed to create medical or psychological problems in their users – although, in this series, we will see that many are indeed built to cause intentional harm. We should not be surprised when new technologies do this work on our bodies, our minds, our relationships. All tools have done this, always, but modern technology frequently disguises or obscures this aspect of toolmaking and tool-using. 

There are obvious examples of the ways that our bodies are changed by the interface with modern technology. We bend over keyboards, strain and damage our eyes, compress our spines from prolonged sitting, and impede our ability to rest. These are real problems, but not new problems by any means. All of the tools that humans have ever wielded have presented similar threats; needles, hammers, plows, clubs, swords, spatulas, all change the bodies and minds that use them. To test this, use any physical technology, repeatedly, for hours on end. The tool begins to shape the body that wields it, and this reshaping is sometimes detrimental. One begins to see the world according to the logic of the tool, and look for other problems that can be solved using the implement. 

The Need for Speed

One example of backflow is impatience. Across the hundreds of thousands of years since humans first took up tools, we have sought to mitigate the negative impact of our instruments. The tools sometimes do good work on our bodies as well, particularly when the use of the tool improves the health of our muscles, our lungs, our joints, sharpening our minds and bodies. The logic of modern economies, with the elevation of capital and efficient production, has sought to minimize work and optimize production. In particular, capitalism clearly prioritizes the tools and modes-of-thinking that maximize profit. The world shaped by capitalism therefore prioritizes tools, and modes of thinking, that facilitate rapid production. Capitalism does not benefit from attention to backflow; caring about sometimes-subtle harm to the bodies of workers and consumers is not good business. Modern tools, and the products created for market, are often deployed before their safety is verified. The drive for profit outpaces safety and wellbeing. We are encouraged to bypass the slower and harder labors of the past, and embrace faster and more efficient tools. As AI-enabled tools are being offered in business and education, they are often marketed on their speed. These tools target similar outcomes with lightning-quick results. 

Ironically, we take up these tools—from smartphones to algorithms—in order to rescue time for more important endeavors. Unfortunately, using them may reshape our minds in such a way that we cannot find, or figure out how to use, the time we think we’ve saved. Digital tools save time, and digital entertainment offers to fill any of the open gaps in our days. More than time, digital tools often offer to spare us innumerable interactions with our neighbors, our family, our friends, and especially with strangers. If something meaningful might happen in these encounters, such as the experience of responsibility for systemic injustice, these digital tools and entertainments are quietly and repeatedly minimizing or bypassing such benefits. This blog series sets out to pay close attention to the way particular tools backflow into the minds and bodies of their users. Tools shape the way we relate to our bodies, our neighbors, and the systemic injustices that plague humanity. It is well worth our time, I suggest, to explore these secret lives of tools. 

Close analysis of modern technology reveals another alarming problem: when first deployed, seemingly “colorblind” or “genderblind” technologies in the United States repeatedly favor people who are white and male. To those who believe in the neutrality of the tool and their makers, sexism, racism, and ablism appear seemingly ex nihilo. Purportedly neutral algorithms somehow wind up reinforcing oppression. What we know about systemic oppression, though, is that these scourges on human society have disseminated their spores into every crevice of human society. Long ago, manufacturers of desks and scissors and guitars realized the absurdity of repeatedly acting surprised that left-handed people struggled to use their products. Likewise, in a society with endemic oppression, we can no longer act surprised when supposedly neutral technology contributes to these problems. Technology that isn’t explicitly designed to struggle against existing oppression is seemingly doomed to support it. 

My modest proposal in this blog series, is that users of modern technology must pay close attention to its quiet work. Digital technology, and Artificial Intelligence, open us to vast opportunities for modern medicine, transportation, communication, education, and countless other avenues of improvement. The pressure to improve these aspects of human life is tremendous, and it pushes us headlong into the use of tools whose backflow into lives, bodies, and communities is rarely considered. People who develop and use these tools should stop being surprised that they wind up creating problems for the people who use them, for their neighbors, and for the environment. My invitation is to a nuanced perspective on technology that accounts for multiple directions of causation that take place when people use tools. It is possible to develop technologies that turn us toward our humanity, that strengthen our bodies and minds, that move in opposition to racism and sexism. Tools shape the way we relate to our bodies, our neighbors, and the systemic injustices that plague humanity. It is well worth our time, I suggest, to explore these secret lives of tools. 

This challenge, issued to all who make and wield modern tech, may be the most important of our time.

[1] U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, One Moving Part: The Forest Service Ax Manual, project leader Bob Beckley, National Technology and Development Program, Missoula, MT, October 29, 2020. Available online at: https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/deliver/one-moving-part-forest-service-ax-manual