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Based on a reading of Ivan Illich’s works, this article unveils a number of conceptual and methodological tools for studying the relations between scholastic and industrial cultures. Far from being opposed, we suggest that they have a common destiny. Is our contemporary access to knowledge the fruit of a slow intellectual, material, and economic evolution initiated in the thirteenth century in universities? This hypothesis is tested on two objects: the Stabilo Boss and a “social” reading and writing device, Readmill.