*Outward operation on tracked structure.* Technology is the subject's outward operation: the inside model turned operative on the structure it tracks. Any account must locate technology at this structural fact rather than at any specific class of artifacts. The structural requirement is that the account distinguish navigation (tracking what structure does) from redirection (using the model to alter what structure produces), with technology constituted by the second function.

*Joint conditions of accuracy and agentive depth.* The second function opens at the depth where the subject has, jointly, a model accurate enough to predict the consequences of alterations and enough reflective agency to commit to alterations as projects rather than as impulses. Any account must accommodate both conditions rather than treating technology as the product of either alone. The structural requirement is that the account distinguish modeling accuracy (the recursion's grasp of structure) from agentive commitment (the recursion's capacity to hold alterations as sustained projects) and identify the joint depth at which technology becomes available.

*Depth-graded distribution.* Animal tool use exists in shallow forms (sea otter stone use, chimpanzee termite-fishing, New Caledonian crow tool manufacture); cumulative cultural technology with tools-making-tools requires deeper recursive depth and linguistic capacity. Any account must accommodate the gradient rather than treating technology as one categorically unified phenomenon. The structural requirement is that the account distinguish what runs at each depth, with the depth gradient running from learned association through planning through cumulative culture and what tracks it being the level of awareness the subject has reached.

*Exterior modal maps.* The deepest form of technology externalizes the subject's modal map — substrate configured to instantiate modal structure outside the body, persistent across the reasoning interval, queryable, recombinable, transmissible across subjects. Any account must accommodate the modal-mapping function rather than treating technology as merely instrumental in the narrow sense. The structural requirement is that the account distinguish ordinary tools (extending bodily capacities) from exterior modal maps (extending the recursion's modeling reach), with notation, writing, mathematical formalism, instruments, and computers forming a gradient of exterior modal maps.

*Substrate-portability.* Interior maps (in the subject's body) and exterior maps (in shared substrate) are configurations of the same medium; what permits a computation in silicon to substitute for one in neurons is that both are configurations of the same structural conditions. Any account must accommodate the substrate-portability rather than treating biological and artifactual modal mapping as essentially different. The structural requirement is that the account distinguish substrate-independence at the structural level (the same modal-mapping activity can run in different media) from substrate-specific implementation (specific brains, specific computers).

*Fixing the modal structure remains conceptual.* Within a fixed modal structure, exterior maps amplify the resolution at which that structure can be searched, simulated, and computed; they do not fix it. Any account must accommodate this limit rather than treating sufficiently powerful tools as solving every problem they can be applied to. The structural requirement is that the account preserve the methodological result (drawn through [§5.1.5](<5.1.5 Fine-Tuning Argument.md>) for the fine-tuning case and [§8.11](<8.11 Technology.md>) cluster-root in general): a subject armed with powerful exterior maps can compute precise answers within whatever modal structure is supplied; whether that structure is well-formed for the question is not something the maps can settle.

*Cumulative cultural transmission.* Cumulative cultural technology requires subjects that can both refine inherited tools and transmit refinements to other subjects. Any account must accommodate the social-transmission dimension rather than treating technology as the achievement of individual subjects alone. The structural requirement is that the account derive cumulative technology from the joint conditions of recursive depth (for refinement) and linguistic transmission (for inheritance), with both conditions required for the cumulative-cultural phenomenon human technology centrally consists in.

*Connection to consciousness and self-modeling.* Technology operates on what awareness ([§8.1](<8.1 Drive.md>)), self-modeling ([§7.8](<7.8 Life.md>)), and reasoning ([§8.4](<8.4 Reasoning.md>)) supply. Any account must connect technology to these upstream registers rather than treating it as autonomous. The structural requirement is that the account derive technology from what self-modeling subjects do when their modeling has become accurate enough to support alteration of what they model.

*Convergence claim without strict modal entailment.* The structural claim is that the recursion turning operative on what it tracks is what the depth gradient makes available; specific instantiations of technology remain conditional on lineage history and circumstance. Any account must accommodate this convergence-without-necessity reading rather than overpromising strict modal entailment. The structural requirement is that the account distinguish the structural availability of the technology-function (entailed by depth and conditions) from the historical contingency of specific technologies (not entailed).

*Coherence with morality and political life.* Technology operates in fields of subjects whose conditions either sustain or starve continued participation ([§8.12](<8.12 Morality.md>)). Any account must accommodate the moral and political stakes rather than treating technology as ethically neutral. The structural requirement is that the account make the bridge between technology and morality legible: the subject's outward operations on structure include operations that affect other subjects, and what counts as legitimate operation is what morality ([§8.12](<8.12 Morality.md>)) and the political extensions in Chapter 9 supply.

*Form-of-life under device conditions.* The modern device paradigm (Borgmann 1984) exhibits a characteristic form: outward operation that delivers a commodity while disburdening the user of engagement with the focal practice that once produced it — the furnace displacing the hearth, the recorded performance displacing the concert, the processed meal displacing the household kitchen. Any account must accommodate this form-of-life dimension — distinguishing focal practices (where engagement with the thing is the point and requires skill, attention, and communal form) from devices that commodify the output and conceal the machinery — while locating both within the same structural account. The structural requirement is that the account identify when and why the device-form predominates: the framework locates this in what occurs when cumulative externalization at scale advances without corresponding deepening of focal engagement, with device-form as a predictable attractor state rather than as the only possible outcome of the technology function.

*Accountable deployment.* The greater a technology's scale, stakes, authority, and irreversibility, the stronger the requirements on its use. An adequate account must distinguish technical capability from legitimate authority and preserve purpose limits, review, correction, and responsibility wherever a system acts on other people's conditions. Execution can be delegated without automatically delegating judgment: the party that selects an objective, authorizes deployment, and receives its benefits remains answerable for what the system sets in motion.

*Repairability, resilience, and retained control.* A technology does not fully extend a person's or community's capacity if continued use depends entirely on a provider that alone can inspect, repair, alter, or recover it. An adequate account must therefore include maintainability, interoperable records and interfaces, access to competent repair, and resilience against foreseeable failure. This does not require every user to master every device. It requires that specialized knowledge, parts, documentation, and legal authority remain sufficiently available for the technology to be maintained without permanent dependence on the seller that supplied it.

Taken together these requirements name what an adequate account of technology has to deliver: outward operation on tracked structure, the joint conditions of accuracy and agentive depth, depth-graded distribution, externalized modal representation, substrate-portability, the structure-fixing limit, cumulative cultural transmission, connections to upstream registers, the convergence-without-strict-entailment claim, coherence with morality and political life, accommodation of the device/focal-practice distinction, accountable deployment, and maintainable control. The framework [§8.11](<8.11 Technology.md>) defends meets each.


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← [8.11.1 What is Disputed](<8.11.1 What is Disputed.md>) | [8.11.3 What is Predicted](<8.11.3 What is Predicted.md>) →
