Abstract:
Contemporary philosophy of technology after
the empirical turn has surprisingly little to say on the
relation between language and technology. This essay
describes this gap, offers a preliminary discussion of how
language and technology may be related to show that there
is a rich conceptual space to be gained, and begins to
explore some ways in which the gap could be bridged by
starting from within specific philosophical subfields and
traditions. One route starts from philosophy of language
(both ‘‘analytic’’ and ‘‘continental’’: Searle and Heidegger)
and discusses some potential implications for thinking
about technology; another starts from artefact-oriented
approaches in philosophy of technology and STS and
shows that these approaches might helpfully be extended
by theorizing relationships between language and technological
artefacts. The essay concludes by suggesting a
research agenda, which invites more work on the relation
between language and technology.
