When I first heard the quote “We shape our tools then our tools shape us” from Orie Steele (A quick web search attributes it originally to John Culkin) I didn’t quite understand the profound wisdom in the statement. It’s one of those clickbait sounding quotes that sticks with you for a bit and has to ruminate for longer like it’s an idea slow cooking in a crockpot on thanksgiving dinner. But the wisdom in it rings true as I see it playing out repetitively within the technology space and I’m sure it makes a difference in many other aspects of our life.

When we build a technology, tool, web app, or even language we first build the tool to solve a problem. Over time though, new problems arise and they inevitably change based on the tools we choose to use to solve them. For example, language in its most primitive form was likely just a means to express emotions such as danger. Eventually it evolved and specialized so much that we can hear the sounds, piece together their grammatical structure, but only if we’re listening are we able to unpack the meaning. Whether that’s because the language being spoken is foreign (in which case we might not even understand the grammatical structure) or because we’re speaking with such abstract jargon the impact of the language as a tool remains the same. We cannot convey our intentions well enough such that our audience understands why we chose to make a noise in the first place. So we end up stuck in this sempiternal cycle of solving problems only for new ones to arise and the evidence we leave is in the iterative design of our tools. Or in the case of language in the semantic drift of words and change of mediums over time.

This has had me wondering lately, how do our newest tools on the Web used for communication shape our conversations? Looking back on the various forms of communication we’ve had throughout history might shed some light on this, but I’m not exactly sure so bear with me as I explore this idea further and hopefully my wandering thought leads to a moment of reflection for you the reader rather than loss of attention already.

Starting with speaking, since that seems to be the most primitive form of communication, when we speak with people we use tone, pauses, and word choice as our primary tools to convey different meanings. This form of communication hasn’t failed us yet so it’s still just as ever present now as it was at the beginning of humanity. But that’s just within the noises we make - when speaking we also express ourselves through our body language both as a speaker and as an audience. The speaker can convey a point with conviction through standing taller, speaking louder, and pausing longer. At the same time, without saying a word an audience can convey a lack of interest without even saying a word such as by yawning or diverting their attention elsewhere. So how does this appear in other forms of communication?

In written form, we lose the ability to convey emphasis through our body language so we had to modify our language to express it. Things like exclamation points, question marks, and even a parenthetical are evidence of that. But we also gained something rather noteworthy as well. With writing, because we have time to pause and reflect on our thoughts, edit them, and think through them we are able to build better structure into our writing to role play as both the author and the audience to make sure our intent isn’t lost. Additionally, because we’re not as restricted by the same social considerations we can write in both a more expansive or condensed form to convey our intent and reflect on our impact.

What becomes interesting though about both forms of communication is that we can both add and lose properties just by changing the medium that we use as well. For example, when speaking we can do this face to face with an individual, behind a podium to a variable sized audience, or even recorded as a video with or without editing. In writing, we can write books, essays, emails, messages, or social media posts. Each comes with their own nuances and social contracts in how we communicate within the medium chosen. And this is how we now shape our tools and then our tools shape us. We create new mediums of communication, and the new mediums form new rituals and social contracts in “acceptable” forms of communication via those mediums. So why does that matter?

It’s important because this informs us about how the methods we choose to communicate with affects not only the cohesiveness of the community, but also the norms and the values reflected. Thereby changing the values we expect from one another. As an example, many collectives have adopted social media as a common form of communication. With that though, particularly with Twitter, comes the limited forms of editing, condensed writing that skips the rationale, and an algorithm that chooses to reinforce rhetoric through amplifying ideas with more likes and speakers with more followers/subscribers/friends.

Social media then instills values such as lack of reflection in our communication, attention grabbing ideas, and a bit of group think. With each new medium comes a different collection of properties that encourages emergent behavioral changes in us that show up in our collective shared values. So the final question I want to leave the reader with to reflect upon… Are the values you want within your communities being encouraged by the tools you use or is there a different tool that is needed to better reflect how you want to communicate with others?