[A]s Martin Heidegger argued in his landmark 1950 essay, we don’t build technology as much as we uncover it and put it to use in a particular context (a process he refers to as “enframing”).

He gives the example of a hydroelectric dam:

“The hydroelectric plant is set into the current of the Rhine. It sets the Rhine to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which then sets the turbines turning. This turning sets those machines in motion whose thrust sets going the electric current for which the long-distance power station and its network of cables are set up to dispatch electricity. In the context of the interlocking processes pertaining to the orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine itself appears to be something at our command.

So the dam itself isn’t technology, but its agent, much like Facebook and Twitter aren’t social networks, but tools for uncovering particular truths about human relationships that have always existed. It is through unlocking those forces that we advance.

¶ 8:02 AM