 engagement,” we now get commodities via devices, which remove the “encumbrance of or the engagement with a context” (41, 47).As an example of the thing/device distinction, he offers a hearth—a thing with context that gives more than just the commodity of heat, e.g., togetherness—and a central heating plant, which does nothing but supply a commodity (41-42).Borgmann argues that insofar as we have become reliant upon devices in this sense, “the coherent and engaging character of the pretechnological world of things” has been jeopardized (47).