Technology the new mother art?

Today's architectural practice is not so much about vision and flair, but trying to do a good job responding to the financial circumstances, says Rowan Moore in The Observer newspaper. Dealing with the same business pressures and demands, where architects cannot survive without computing power, the result is that most architectural projects end up quite similar to each other. But if designing for the modern urban environment is shaped by technology and efficiency, what happens to the old idea of architecture as the mother of all arts?

It's just an idea

Does ideation reflect the ethos of modernity to transform ourselves and the material world, or does it express the postmodern notion of design as a conceptual medium liberated from the need of realisation, where designers are conceptualisers rather than makers? But what is the idea without direction and action?