Heidegger initially developed the themes in the text in the lecture "The Framework" ("Das Gestell"), first presented on December 1, 1949, in Bremen.

[1] The question concerning technology is asked, as Heidegger notes, “so as to prepare a free relationship to it.”[2] The relationship will be free “if it opens our human existence (Dasein) to the essence of technology.”[2] This is because “[o]nly the true brings us into a free relationship with that which concerns us from out of its essence.”[3] Thus, questioning uncovers the questioned in its (true) essence as it is, enabling it to be “experienced within its own bounds”[4] by seeking “the true by way of the correct.”[4] This is akin to the Aristotelian way of advancing “from what is more obscure by nature, but clearer to us, towards what is more clear and more knowable by nature.” Heidegger begins the question by noting that “We ask the question concerning technology when we ask what it is.”[4] This stems from following an ancient doctrine to which “the essence of a thing is considered to be what the thing is.”[4] He starts from the correct or clear definition that “Everyone knows the two statements that answer our question,”[4] that is, that “[t]echnology is a means to an end [and] a human activity.”[4] The reason granted is that “to posit ends and procure and utilize the means to them is a human activity.”[4] If technology is a means to a human end, this conception can therefore be “called the instrumental and anthropological definition of technology.”[5] This raises the further question, “[w]hat is the instrumental itself?”[3] This entails questioning the purview of instrumentality in which means and ends are subsumed, entailing the question, “[w]ithin what do such things as means and end belong?”[3] A means can be seen as that through and by which an end is effected.

As noted, “The end in keeping with which the kind of means to be used is determined is also considered a cause.”[3] This conceptualization of instrumentality as means and ends leads the question further into causality, suggesting that “[w]herever ends are pursued and means are employed, wherever instrumentality reigns, there reigns causality.”[3] To question causality, Heidegger starts from what “[f]or centuries philosophy has taught”[3] regarding the traditional "four causes.”[3] These are traditionally enumerated as (1) the “causa materialis, the material, the matter out of which" something is made; (2) the “causa formalis, the form, the shape into which the material enters”; (3) the “causa finalis, the end, in relation to which [the thing] required is determined as to its form and matter"; and (4) the "causa efficiens, which brings about the effect that is the finished [thing].”[3] Heidegger concludes that “[w]hat technology is, when represented as a means, discloses itself when we trace instrumentality back to fourfold causality.

[6] Each element works together to create the chalice in a different manner: Thus four ways of owing hold sway in the sacrificial vessel that lies ready before us.

[6][8] To exemplify this, Heidegger draws on the Rhine River as an example of how our modern technology can change a cultural symbol.

[6] To explain this, Heidegger uses the example of a forester and his relationship to the paper and print industries, as he waits in standing reserve for their wishes.

As he states, this threat "does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology.

"[7] Rather, the threat is the essence because "the rule of enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.