Functional vs. Instrumental Technologies

Two different contrasts to "existential technology" inside the corpus. Konior's functional technologies are used on other people to help or harm, transparently expanding the capacity for good and evil (weapons, medicine, media, energy); the existential ones alter evolutionary trajectories and "as what" we survive. Bratton's instrumental technologies act only by what they do; his existential ones (telescopes, microscopes, computation, simulation) change how we understand the world. Bratton's "existential" is roughly Konior's gnostic subcategory; her anthropoforming category has no Bratton counterpart. Both attribute the distinction to Lem, but Konior says it is her elaboration of a passing remark.