I like the car analogy. Made me remember the old "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (Pirsig) which showed that the technology of the motorcycle and its maintenance were not mere means to the rides, but they too were also ends. All these ends were related without reduction and part of a whole. The need to split things apart -- into "means" and "end" -- and then to elevate one above the other is our Western cultural inheritance, but it is not the final and only truth, that book suggested.
Some analogies (or dis-analogies, perhaps) where a process is not just the means to the end:
Some who cook love the process as much as the plated food. The "slow food movement" adds in the local region as part of that larger process.
Some baseball players love the game as much as the end score. There is an "art" to the game, which is the pitching, catching, strategy, etc. (Might one not see this in the equipment we use, discuss, in audio?)
Etc.
Without music equipment is worthless, roberjerman points out. I see the point. But a stack of records with nothing to play them on doesn’t seem much better.
Some analogies (or dis-analogies, perhaps) where a process is not just the means to the end:
Some who cook love the process as much as the plated food. The "slow food movement" adds in the local region as part of that larger process.
Some baseball players love the game as much as the end score. There is an "art" to the game, which is the pitching, catching, strategy, etc. (Might one not see this in the equipment we use, discuss, in audio?)
Etc.
Without music equipment is worthless, roberjerman points out. I see the point. But a stack of records with nothing to play them on doesn’t seem much better.