The Matt Curve is not dissimilar to Ivan Illich's concept of "two watersheds" for a given technology:
The first threshold occurs when a tool (be it something straightforwardly technological like the car, or institutional like formal education or professional healthcare) surpasses the costs required to maintain or use it. At this point, the tool is a net benefit to people.
However, "When a tool-based activity exceeds a threshold defined by the ad hoc scale, it first turns against its end, then threatens to destroy the entire social body... Reaching a certain threshold, the tool, from servant, becomes despot.”[1]
For example, the car goes from something that enables individual freedom, to a basic necessity in a car-dependent society. At this point, the technology has a "radical monopoly"[2], and those without access to it are excluded or no longer able to fully participate in society.
Perhaps this maps to Matt's distinction of "personal" and "social" technology. Supposedly Illich's work was very influential on the early development of personal computers.
So what to do about this?
Illich proposed a reorientation towards "conviviality":
> People need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others. Prisoners in rich countries often have access to more things and services than members of their families, but they have no say in how things are to be made and cannot decide what to do with them. Their punishment consists in being deprived of what I shall call “conviviality.” They are degraded to the status of mere consumers.
> I choose the term “conviviality” to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members.[1]
The first threshold occurs when a tool (be it something straightforwardly technological like the car, or institutional like formal education or professional healthcare) surpasses the costs required to maintain or use it. At this point, the tool is a net benefit to people.
However, "When a tool-based activity exceeds a threshold defined by the ad hoc scale, it first turns against its end, then threatens to destroy the entire social body... Reaching a certain threshold, the tool, from servant, becomes despot.”[1]
For example, the car goes from something that enables individual freedom, to a basic necessity in a car-dependent society. At this point, the technology has a "radical monopoly"[2], and those without access to it are excluded or no longer able to fully participate in society.
Perhaps this maps to Matt's distinction of "personal" and "social" technology. Supposedly Illich's work was very influential on the early development of personal computers.
So what to do about this?
Illich proposed a reorientation towards "conviviality":
> People need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others. Prisoners in rich countries often have access to more things and services than members of their families, but they have no say in how things are to be made and cannot decide what to do with them. Their punishment consists in being deprived of what I shall call “conviviality.” They are degraded to the status of mere consumers.
> I choose the term “conviviality” to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society’s members.[1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tools_for_Conviviality
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_monopoly