Using Words and Things

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 ThingsPart I: Humans Speak (Subjects versus Objects)Chapter 2: Speaking with and about TechnologyChapter 3: Giving Meaning to Technology: A Searlean Social Ontology of Technological ArtefactsPart II: Language Speaks (Subjects Change Objects)Chapter 4: Language and the Social Construction of ArtefactsChapter 5: All about Language: Postmodern Interpretations, or the Muting of Humans and TechnologyPart III: Technology Speaks (Objects Change Subjects)Chapter 6: What Technology Tells Us (To Do) (Part 1): Media, Artefacts, NetworksChapter 7: What Technology Tells Us (To Do) (Part 2): Narrative Technologies, or Interpreting and Materializing RicoeurPart IV: Humans, Language, and Technology Speak (Subjects and Objects Entangled)Chapter 8: Using and Performing with Words and Things

"Coeckelbergh's book is an important and welcome study, especially for the way it critiques the dismissal or neglect of language in contemporary philosophy of technology, counters this omission by integrating such philosophy with the postmodern investigations of language, and thus sketches new possibilities for conceptualizing technology." – Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews