Description: Our presentation examines the nature and the impact of the use of technology in education. In our earlier work we have analysed the structural similarities between the Tyler rationale, interpreted as a paradigm of curricular control, and the emblematic features of the current discourses affecting the use of educational technology. Our conclusion was that instrumental rationality is inherent in the models and practices and that there is a natural tendency to choose the Tylerian approach unintentionally as a result of the work on different levels, as the ramifications of the rationale cannot be detected inside the framework. (Hautakangas & Kiilakoski 2004) If this paradigm becomes a general rule, this means that there will necessarily be cases that do not work as hoped. Our main analytical tool is philosophy of technology.The basic question that we are wrestling with is, why does the technology and instrumental, calculative rationality has such a grip in our societies? To answer this question our aim is to analyse what types of factors do have an effect to this direction and analyse some examples of them more thoroughly. Our belief is that to be able to prepare responses which surpass both blind faith in technology and naïve rejection of it, we need some bridging work to work out an alternative to technological determinism. As philosophers we can take our form of life as a material for an analysis, but as educationalists we have to discuss also how it has become what it is and how it may possibly be changed. Methodology: The complexity of the phenomena relative to education and technology is reflected in the methodology we have adopted in dealing with the questions. The purposes of our investigation can be divided into two parts. One part of our work is philosophical analysis and description of the theoretical frameworks and models that are used in education and technology. In this work we use Heidegger's philosophy of technology and later Wittgenstein's views on logic of language as our main methodological points of departure. From We are attempting to clarify the logical structure and the premises that the used paradigms rely on and to describe their inherent restricitions. The second part of the work can be described as a theoretical and cultural analysis of the discourses related to e-learning and their possible impacts on educational practices and societies. We do not attempt to give an exhaustive analysis, but to choose some of the most revealing practical examples from educational policy, quality assurance and technological design to be put under scrutiny and to show their relation to the theoretical and philosophical modes of thought. Conclusions: Theories of insrumental rationality point out that technologicy is not neutral. It requires a certain type of rationality which may affect the field of education in an unexpected manner. For example, there is a real possibility to force the practical success of educational technology by making human activities conform completely to the simplest manageable models, bringing them under total control. Even a more detailed and encompassing model does not change the basic contradiction that this one type of rationality does not cover all important aspects in the phenomenon we call education. Another possibility is to resist intentionally the desire to conceptualize and control every aspect of education to the minutest detail, and to concentrate on the use of technology where it is most appropriate. As the paradigm of instrumental rationality alone does not suffice for using technology wisely, there is a need to analyse alternative approaches and the conditions for them to be used in a genuinely pluralistic fashion.