What we mean by capacity

Words that carry a lab's mission tend to soften with use, so it is worth being exact while the term is young. When we say capacity, we mean: the range of things a person is genuinely able to do — understand, judge, make, repair, teach, organize — measured, crucially, when the tool is not in their hands.

The definition does real work. It distinguishes capacity from access (what you can do while the tool cooperates) and from output (what gets produced, by whatever means). A navigation app gives access to wayfinding; it demonstrably erodes the capacity for it. A calculator gives access to arithmetic; taught well, it can deepen the capacity for quantitative reasoning. Same genre of tool, opposite effects on the person — the difference is design, and it is measurable.

Capacity also names what time is for, which is why it pairs with our other measure, returned time. An hour returned to someone exhausted and isolated is a smaller gift than the same hour returned into a life with room for learning, care, and company. Tools alone cannot supply that room — but they decide, at the margin, whether it grows or shrinks. Building for the growing direction is the whole program of this lab, stated in one sentence.