When we obsessively look at things which are supposed to be seen from, we make one of our deepest category mistakes. We confuse subject with object.

The best tools are subject-object hybrids. In use, tools fuse with our subjectivity and extend our being beyond the frame of the body. They become transparent to us, like our own eyes, ears, hearts and hands.

We see through glasses. We write through pens. We transport our bodies through bicycles. We strike things across distances with bows and arrows. We summon sentences and images through software and digital devices. We envelop ourselves in clothing and buildings.

We attend to the world, interact with things and absorb ourselves in our activities through these tools, and when we do, tools are subject extensions.

But we can also turn our attention to them and take them as objects. Existentially, they evert into objects.

I believe gadget blogs destroyed the golden age of design. Design was something stared at, written about, chattered about, compared side-by-side, obsessed over — objectified like a woman.

As a designer, I love a tool that self-effaces into imperceptibility when we approach the world with it, but when we turn toward the tool, it reveals itself to us as beautiful and right.

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Tools belong to the subtle realm (Yetzirah) — part subject, part object, wholly both.

Philosophies are known-from.

Religions are lived-from.

They should be beautiful to experience.

But most importantly — experience should be beautiful from them.

They are not beliefs. They are faiths by which beliefs are believed.

When they become objects, they empty the entire world around them: everted sepulchers.