A relationship with technology does not remain outside the body. Through repeated use, the possibilities and constraints of a tool can become part of how a body perceives, moves and acts. Bodily action, in turn, leaves consequences within the technological arrangement it acts upon. But such embodiment raises another question: what happens when this relationship is no longer limited to a moment of use, but becomes part of the conditions within which bodily experience takes place?

A tool, in the sense used so far, is something encountered. It can be picked up, used and put down. The lettering guide sits in a drawer between uses. The visit-card-maker is assembled for an exchange and set aside afterwards. An Instrument of Attention operates only for the duration of a conversation. In each case, the relationship between body and technology takes place within a relatively bounded episode.

There is something reassuringly simple about a tool. I pick it up. I use it. I put it down. The lettering guide sits in a drawer between uses. The visit-card-maker comes out when two people want to make something together. An Instrument of Attention listens for the duration of a conversation, and then stops.

A relationship with a tool can become deeply bodily. Its possibilities and constraints can become part of how I move, perceive and act. But the encounter still seems to have an edge. There is a moment before it begins and another after it ends. This is not how most contemporary technology actually behaves. Ursula Franklin gives technology a much larger boundary than the object in front of us. Technology, for her, is not simply a collection of devices. It is also the organisation of knowledge, labour, materials, processes and ways of doing things that allow those devices to exist and operate. A technological object, then, does not begin and end at its casing.