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This chapter discusses Albert Borgmann's neo-Heideggerian critique of the ways in which contemporary men and women interact with technology. He suggests that a move beyond that he calls "the device paradigm" in order to consider "focal things and practices", about which we are able to communicate by means of what he calls "deictic" discourse. Borgmann's solution to the problem of obscured focal things and practices is to enter technology under two columns: one is the bad part of technology and the other is the good part.

This chapter addresses two related questions: How can we evaluate appropriate and inappropriate technology? And how can we evaluate focal things and practices, for surely many of them are troubling? The chapter, inspired by John Dewey's work, has developed a pragmatic philosophy of technology—pragmatechnics. The chapter contrasts pragmatechnics with focaltechnics, a characterization of Borgmann's vision of appropriate technology. Borgmann presents a rigid essentialism, splitting technology into “two ledger columns” of bad and good. The device paradigm is bad; devices as supportive of focal things are good. The chapter argues for a “flexible functionalism” that would counter what is perceived here as a tendency by Borgmann to reduce a device to an essential property. This chapter's claim is that pragmatechnics are more flexible and better for understanding the complexities of contemporary technological life.

This chapter appreciates the way focal things may counterbalance devices. It finds that Borgmann's evaluation of the device paradigm does not always bear out for individual devices. Simply because a technological object can be classified as a device does not necessarily mean that it will have the negative effects on engagement and human relationships that Borgmann's theory predicts; some devices actually foster these values, illustrating the chapter's points with a study done on women's use of telephones. “The machinery that clouds the story of a device does not appear to prevent that device from playing a role in relationship building.” If so, devices under some conditions may be more promising than Borgmann thinks; Michelfelder finds that devices can themselves support focal practices if they are used in a context of narrative and tradition.

This chapter argues not only that farming is an exemplary focal practice, but, moreover, that it is the most primary and comprehensive of all focal practices. For Borgmann, the material event of the shift from things to devices is the most significant of our time; the chapter finds that land should be seen as the largest of these public, focal material things because land and nearly all cultural practices are intertwined. Arguing for the fundamental importance of place over things, the chapter maintains that farming is correlative to a place, not a thing; it warns against a reading of Borgmann that would reduce place to a function of the things that occupy it, a kind of “Kantian environmentalism.” This subtle difference between places and things becomes important when we remember that inhabiting a place is the real issue of reform and when we consider that “land as place is replaced by a version of the device paradigm in which land presents itself as but one of many purchased inputs in the production process.”

This chapter points out how art, in particular film, can challenge technology in Borgmann's sense. Films, such as The Conversation, can help us to criticize technology by demonstrating vividly its logic and irony. Other films, such as Babette's Feast and Local Hero can disclose in moving detail Borgmann's focal things and practices. Films such as these may bring us out of the cave of consumption into the light of day. However, the chapter first shows how film, television, and advertisement fuel the device paradigm and keep us chained in the cave, as it were. It distinguishes these kinds of films from the way cinema as mass media can be reduced to a mere device, a source of entertainment and little else. In relation to this, the chapter discusses the development of montage in advertising, television, propaganda, and film.