Borgmann, in Verbeek's view has an improved approach to the analysis of technology's role, because he approaches it from the effects of specific technologies, rather than an abstract and monolithic view of "Technology". He defines what he calls the "device paradigm" - that is a shift from "things", which are inseparable from their context and which require high involvement or effort from humans, to "devices" which have low involvement, are not specifically involved in a certain context.
Devices have the property of providing 'availability' and what is provided then becomes a 'commodity'. People then consume the commodity, which provides the problem for Borgmann. Though technology improves life (i.e. enables "the good life") by making previously unavailable things available, it also promotes this passive, consumptive lifestyle, which prevents engagement with authentic existence, reminiscent of Jaspers. This is Borgmann's "irony of technology" - it promises enrichment but ends up impoverishing.
Technology is heavily implicated in socio-political structuring as well. Liberal democracy, which emphasizes freedom to persue personal realization, is enabled because technology frees people from their self-subsistance. The problem is that the device paradigm dictates that people must still consume, and their freedom is restricted to the manner of consumption, not a choice about whether or not to live the consumptive lifestyle. In addition, technology stabilizes the (class-related) status-quo by promising future enrichment to working and middle classes.
A potential alternative is present to Borgmann in the form of "focal practises" and "focal things". That is, activities which are persued for their own sake rather than as a means to an end, and the specific technologies that enable such. These focal practises enable people to engage with their reality.
Verbeek criticises Borgmann's analysis in several ways: first, there are examples of ways that technology enables engagement that would not otherwise be possible; second, Borgmann's definition of engagment shifts from effort or difficulty to meaningfulness, when the two shouldn't be equated.
Verbeek also points out that the way that technological objects are present to us is not as simple as Heidegger's and Borgmann's binary present-at-hand vs. readiness-to-hand, but since some objects display both properties, these should be seen as opposite ends of a spectrum.
The chapter concludes with a summary of the "postphenomenological vocabulary" that Verbeek is attempting to build - showing how technological objects mediate or translate our perception of the world as well as how we exist in it and interact with it. The picture is rather more complex than describing technology either as a totally autonomous and monolithic force, or as a totally neutral means.
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