Another book that I would recommend for everyone to read is Transforming Our Days: Spirituality, Community and Liturgy in a Technological Culture by Richard R. Gaillardetz*.
Early in his book, Gaillardetz writes of the work of Albert Borgmann who speaks of the differences of Technological Devices and Focal Things. Gaillardetz writes:
Borgmann asks us to consider the role of the fireplace or wood-burning stove in a premodern home. The family frequently gathers around the firplace as a localized source of heat for important discussion and family entertainment. The fireplace must be tended regularly. To do so one must master a set of skills: knowing which kinds of wood burn best and how to properly start and stoke the fire. These skills and practices inevitably bring one into contact with the larger world of nature (retrieving and chopping the wood) and with other persons. They are skills that must be passed on from one person to another. When it is the sole heat source in the home, the fireplace also creates the rhythm for the life of the home. The need for its regular maintenance determines family chores, the timing of meals, the gathering of family and friends.
The fireplace or wood-burning stove is a typical example of what Borgmann calls a “focal thing.” Typical “focal things” are inseparable from the particular context in which they are encountered. While they produce a desired good (in this case, heat), they do so only within the context of a complex world of “manifold engagement” – a multitextured, multi-layered web of relationships with the larger world – in which other goods, often overlooked, are also experienced. The wood-burning stove does produce heat, the principal desired good, but it also offers subtler goods derived from the way in which it gathers the household, demands engagement with the larger world, and so forth. (19-20)
By contrast, a comparison is then made with the central heating system – a technological device which provides the same commodity as the wood-burning stove, namely, heat, but without intruding into our lives or placing demands on our time. (21) Like the focal thing, the modern “device” does offer us vital goods and services, but it does so in a manner that separates the device from the commodity produced. In fact, that device functions best when it goes completely unnoticed, receding into the background. One of the central characteristics of a device is its concealment. (22)
When goods are reduced to commodities and procured for enjoyment in ways that do not demand or even allow for real engagement with our world, the paradoxical result is a decreased capacity for enjoyment. (26)
The next few posts will continue to explore how technological devices have impoverished our lives in ways that focal practices would not allow. I believe that all of this has to do with being called by God to be effective not just efficient.
Grace and peace
tmitchellmusic 
Just now getting to catch up on various posts, your being one of them. Your post reminded me of what we used to teach when I was an instructor in the Governors Management School. “Efficiency is doing things right, Effective is doing the right things. The key is to do the right things efficiently.”
Amen and Amen!