“In all societies, ethical and aesthetic mediations supply the simplified technical object with new secondary qualities that seamlessly reinsert it into its new social context. The ornamentation of artifacts and their investment with ethical meaning is integral to production in all traditional cultures. Only modern industrial societies distinguish production from aesthetics through indifference to the social insertion of their objects, the substitution of packaging for an inherent aesthetic elaboration, or aesthetic functionalism. From this results the artificial separation of technique and aesthetics characteristic of our societies. Ethical limits too are overthrown in the breakdown of religious and craft traditions. In any case, however marginalized, mediations remain an essential aspect of the technical process.”

Andrew Feenberg offers a grab-bag of thougths on technology and culture in this text