section_path: Non-material usage
section_name: Non-material usage
paragraph_text: Non-material usage
  
  By extension, concepts which support systematic or investigative thought are often referred to as "tools", for example Vanessa Dye refers to "tools of reflection" and "tools to help sharpen your professional practice" for trainee teachers, illustrating the connection between physical and conceptual tools by quoting the French scientist Claude Bernaud:
  
  we must change when they have served their purpose, as we change a blunt lancet that we have used long enough.
  
  Similarly, a decision-making process "developed to help women and their partners make confident and informed decisions when planning where to give birth" is described as a "Birth Choice tool":
  
  The tool encourages women to consider out-of-hospital settings where appropriate,
  
  and the idea of a "toolkit" is used by the International Labour Organization to describe a set of processes applicable to improving global labour relations.
  
  A telephone is a communication tool that interfaces between two people engaged in conversation at one level. It also interfaces between each user and the communication network at another level. It is in the domain of media and communications technology that a counter-intuitive aspect of our relationships with our tools first began to gain popular recognition. John M. Culkin famously said, "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us". One set of scholars expanded on this to say: "Humans create inspiring and empowering technologies but also are influenced, augmented, manipulated, and even imprisoned by technology".