Using Words and Things

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.