Tools catalogued and evaluated for what they do, where (and if) they stop, and how easily you can give them up.
A hollow marker means not fully scored yet. See how we evaluate tools. Know a tool we should look at? Suggest one, or nominate a WordPress plugin.
Established
Grinds coffee beans and makes espresso at home, one to four shots at a time, and steams milk. It automates the pressure and the temperature while leaving the grind, the tamp, and optionally a 1-2 stage (pre-infusion and extraction) start/stop timing to the person using it.
Established
Puts a telephone, a camera, a map, a wallet, and a general-purpose computer in a pocket, always connected, with its software supplied through its maker’s store.
Catalogue · Communication · Learning
Emerging
Produces text in response to text, on a computer you control, with no connection to its maker. It works by predicting likely next words from patterns found in a very large body of writing.
Established
Lets people keep words outside memory: write them down, send them across distance and time, and read what others have written, in the tongues they already speak and for uses of their own.
Emerging
Lets people on thousands of separately run servers follow and reply to each other, using a shared open protocol. Posts arrive in the order they were written; no company ranks them.
Catalogue · Communication · Learning
Emerging
Produces text in response to text, as a service run by a company: answers, summaries, translations, drafts, and computer code. It works by predicting likely next words from patterns found in a very large body of writing.
since 1150 · Established
Holds text and pictures on pages bound along one edge, so a reader can carry it, open it anywhere, and return to any passage without power or permission.
since 1492 · Established
Teaches a whole population to read and write one standard language, fixed by rule, certified by schools, and required by offices.
since 2026 · Emerging
Collects the feeds you choose and shows them as a river that fades with time, instead of an inbox to clear.
Established
Web publishing for anyone, from small-scale blogs to massive network applications.
since 1955 · Established
Diagnoses and treats illness, mostly through hospitals and clinics run by licensed professionals and paid for by insurers or the state.
Established
Brings children together in graded classes under certified teachers, for a set number of years, to prepare them for work and (occasionally, still) citizenship.
Established
Carries a few people and their things from door to door, quickly, over a road network built for it.
Established
Sorts what other people and organizations post into one endless stream, ranked by a platform’s software for what will hold your attention.
Emerging
Carries a few people and their things from door to door, quickly, over a road network built for cars, on electricity instead of gasoline.
Emerging
Captures carbon dioxide from power plants, gas processing, and industry, and stores it underground or uses it to recover more oil.
Established
Lends books and other materials to anyone, free, and gives them a place to read, ask questions, and look things up. Borrowing doesn’t use anything up: a returned book serves the next reader.
Established
Lets anyone with a line speak to anyone else with one, in real time, about anything. The network carries the call; it has no say in what is said.
since 1885 · Established
Moves a person, and a modest load, three or four times faster than walking, for about a fifth of the energy walking takes over the same distance (Illich’s figures). It runs on food and needs nothing more than a passable path.
