# Access to Tools **Domain:** Agency / Publishing / Knowledge Infrastructure **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Evolving **Related:** [[Human Agency]], [[Cognitive Exteriorization]], [[Personal Computing]], [[Design for Dignity]] --- ## Definition **Access to Tools** is the Whole Earth principle that people gain practical agency when they can discover and obtain techniques, information and instruments for shaping their environments. ## Corpus Context The concept distinguishes advisory infrastructure from administration. [[Whole Earth Catalog]] expands the option set but does not issue commands. That makes it an ancestor of [[Co-Creative Substrate]] and a counterpoint to algorithmic systems that optimize on a person's behalf. ## Key Insight **This node connects its historical or conceptual subject to the corpus without treating analogy as proof of direct influence.** ## See Also [[Human Agency]], [[Cognitive Exteriorization]], [[Personal Computing]], [[Design for Dignity]] ## Sources / Provenance - [[articles/Beyond the Sea|Beyond the Sea]]