When describing his past work Michel Foucault stated: "The main problem when people try to rationalize something is not to investigate whether or not they conform to principles of rationality, but to discover which kind of rationality they are using." We claim that instrumental rationality may become even more dominant form of rationality in education if centralized control as an influential model of curriculum planning continues to underlie also the development of educational technology as the use of technology increases. Different institutional agents, such as national states, families and educational institutions are claimed to be in the state of crisis because of cultural, social, political and scientific changes. The turbulent area of postmodernity, reflexive modernity, another modernity or the information age poses challenges to educational activities both on the public and private sphere. In the society of flows stable structures are endangered. It is claimed that these structures can't survive in the present situation because of their closed vision and rigidity. Educational technology is often seen as a solution to the present social and cultural problems. Nowadays education is life-long process which cannot even in principle be conducted in one place. This is often seen as one of the factors why existing educational institutions are no longer able to answer the problems of current situation. When we are approaching the economy of signs instead of economy of production, education must offer ways to manipulate symbols and analyze reality in terms of different, perhaps incommensurable language games.Educational technology is thought to cause a change in education. The amount and direction of change can, however, be questioned. If educational technology is unintentionally engineered according to modern models of instrumental rationality, technology can strengthen the methods of disciplinary societies instead of replacing them with other means.Creating effective control technologies has been a continuing trend in curriculum planning. Besides tools or machines, technology can be seen to include different procedures, rules, regulations or human techniques. The developing educational technology offers possibilities for mechanizing the educational processes in order to reach a teacher-proof curriculum. The process of education can be standardized by controlling objectives, values, teaching and evaluation. Thus, individual differences are thought not to be crucial for the implementation of a centralized education.From the perspective of instrumental rationality applying computer technologies to command centralized control over the whole instructional process has great potential advantages. Within the moral framework of modernity the control over the whole process is thought to be valuable as such. By using systematic quality assurance and standardized evaluation for the measurable processes in studying, teaching and learning it is possible to increase the predictability of the processes. This entails a promise of learning products that can be used as commodities.The model of centralized control also coincides well with the idea of 'a knowledge-worker', a human resource for corporate knowledge-creation. The idea of life-long learning and subsequent emphasis on the importance of learning skills are intelligible and desirable in a society where information outdates fast and the job vacancies are short-term and project-oriented. E-learning is often seen as a controlled way to transform people through education into this mode of work. Because of the complexity of the contextual and situational factors in learning, instruction and studying cannot be preplanned adequately and exhaustively. Educational technology, however, must be designed in unambiguous and explicit terms. As perspective of centralized control offers readily applicable explicit models, this perspective may dominate the development of education without rendering itself under critical evaluation.