This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relationship between language and technology and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. Engaging with the work of Searle, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Ihde, Latour, and Ricoeur, the author constructs a synthesis of three extreme, untenable positions: only humans speak and neither language nor technologies speak; only language speaks and neither humans nor technologies speak; and only technology speaks and neither humans nor language speak. The construction of this synthesis goes hand in hand with a narrative about subjects and objects that become entangled and constitute one another.

Mark Coeckelbergh is Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, and (part-time) Professor of Technology and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University, UK. His publications include Growing Moral Relations (2012), Human Being @ Risk (2013), Environmental Skill (2015), Money Machines (2015), New Romantic Cyborgs (2017), and numerous articles in the area of philosophy of technology.

Chapter 1: Introduction: Words and Things

Part I: Humans Speak (Subjects versus Objects)

Chapter 2: Speaking with and about Technology

Chapter 3: Giving Meaning to Technology: A Searlean Social Ontology of Technological Artefacts

Part II: Language Speaks (Subjects Change Objects)

Chapter 4: Language and the Social Construction of Artefacts

Chapter 5: All about Language: Postmodern Interpretations, or the Muting of Humans and Technology

Part III: Technology Speaks (Objects Change Subjects)

Chapter 6: What Technology Tells Us (To Do) (Part 1): Media, Artefacts, Networks

Chapter 7: What Technology Tells Us (To Do) (Part 2): Narrative Technologies, or Interpreting and Materializing Ricoeur

Part IV: Humans, Language, and Technology Speak (Subjects and Objects Entangled)

Chapter 8: Using and Performing with Words and Things