In one of the great moments of philosophy during the 20th century–the essay “The Question Concerning Technology”–Martin Heidegger proposed that a pathological effect of technology consisted in reducing everything to potential energy. It was an idiosyncracy of his philosophy that he considered technology a “revealing”; in other words, he viewed technology as a way of making some reality “x” present in a particular mode to some apprehension “y”. For example, technology teaches us to apprehend the earth as a potentially limitless mine of rare earth minerals, or a forest as potential heat and warmth (by way of being firewood), or potential shelter (by way of being the frame of a housing structure).