To me, as a dedicated technologist myself, and I bet also to the mechanical engineer who reconsructed the mechanism; technology is a tool that we use to abstract our thinking to ever higher levels.
After a certain amount of knowledge about technology is gained, this becomes pretty obvious, it seems to me.
Knowledge itself is technology, we can't separate one from the other, surely.
How do we know this instrument wasn't something devised before even coming to Earth?
Why was a planetary simulator thought to be needed, if we were always just Earth-bound?