Ends Cannot Be Kept Firm
The engineer reduces a problem to its essential functions and realizes the latter in the most efficient way possible. Such isolating of functions seems to be a purifying, liberating, and rational affair. It eliminaties the ballast of tradition, site, commitment, and fixity. But ends cannot be kept firm when means are relativized, nor can problems remain articulate when their context is erased. Ends and problems so treated are attenuated to commodities until they almost disappear there is nearly nothing,.
— Technology and the Character of Comtemporary Life, Albert Borgmain, p. 66