What's the subject of the paper?
How engineering decisions have an entrainment effect. Within an engineering application this is simple enough. Your approach - the solutions you choose - will generate and/or obviate problems in other areas of whatever system you are working within. So, for a system to be functional, the solutions to each problem it solves must be 'entrained,' meaning the solutions align in whatever necessary way. Otherwise, your design will induce problems that go without answer and cause the system to malfunction in some way.
I use the word entrainment because I think this effect is native to any working system and, especially in systems of which people are a part, has an imperative quality. Like the imperative of a riptide -> current -> entrainment.
The idea is that when people become involved with technology within a system, the people, being far more adaptable than any technology (which are mostly static after being implemented, I assume), will be entrained to the expedients of the technology. We call this learning how to use something. Learning to use a book (read). Learning to use a computer. Learning to use a car (drive). Learning how to use Google. This is obvious but also seems to not be considered very carefully by designers and engineers. The result is that our inventions rely far too much on their user's ability to adapt to it, with the effect that the user becomes deranged in some way.
Obviously there is so much more to say but I spent too much time on this as it is.
