Tools

There're no other species than human beings in the world that has developed such a diverse and sophiscated array of tools, or built such an elaborate cultural life around their use, and the tools we use are not limited to artifacts but also signs and symbols such as language, music, words, works of art, diagrams, maps, etc. We found the tools, fashioned the ways of using them to extend and mediate our actions, and we passed them on, improved upon, from one generation to the next.

Every day and every moment, we use these "cultural and historical" tools to mediate our interactions with each other and with our surroundings for achieving goals to which our activities are directed. In a profound way, we are so wedded to and constituted by the tools we use that we cannot be understood apart from them. As Vygotsky had insightfully pointed out "Tools are not only as aids developed historically to mediate relationships with society or reflections of the external world but as main means of mastering psychological processes that have a decisive influence on the formation of man's psychological activity."