ABSTRACT
BEING ASKED TO PRESENT OUR WORK in terms of ‘technology’ seems to some-
how imply it as haecceity – as a graspable essence or entity, a ‘this-ness’. Yet
if one considers technology in a generalized sense as any means by which
man ‘outers’ an inner capacity (Marshall McLuhan2), or as an endless process
of experiential ‘enframing’ (Martin Heidegger3), then it comes to be seen as a
complex textile whose interwoven threads invisibly traverse every level of cul-
tural thought. If one conjures, say, the fabulous Jacquard machine as the very
image of technology, a mental loom-work of illimitable post-hand-eye dexterity,
then even here there is a quite miraculous vanishing act, the beguiling effort-
lessness of the weaving process, or the mesmeric quality of the interwoven
threads themselves, making it fade into a ‘background’ of adapted profi ciency.
