Convival Tools

Jean at Creativity/Machine asked "So, which tools for creative content production and distribution are most "convivial"?"

(In case you're not going to read Jean's post, she quotes Ivan Illich: "Convivial tools are those which give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision.")

Jean refines her question further by comparing:

Those that are relatively open and complex and invite social connection (e.g. open source software with its collaborative configurability and non-didactic, but often difficult GUIs?); or sole-user black boxes (closed but designed to "guide" the inexperienced user along familiar pathways to enable easier content production - like iMovie)?

I don't think the comparison is as simple as that. To the user who doesn't want to care about learning a new user interface, a black-box may be the interface that best allows them to "enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision". Similarly, when the user wants to get their point across as quickly as possible a black-boxed experience may be the most convivial.

If a user (or artist) finds that a black-boxed tool is limiting their expression, then they might seek out a new tool that is more open in the expression it allows. If the user/artist is always pushing the boundaries of expression they may end up developing their own tools in an effort to express themselves in a way that is not impeded by any existing tools.

To me, it would seem that the conviviality of a tool depends on what a user/artist is trying to express and the extent of their willingness to master the tool to achieve that expression.