Technical Things: an Essay on the Social Constitution of Technical Artefacts

Human history is partially a history of technological development. Many steps in the cultural and intellectual development of human societies include development of new kinds of technology and technical artefacts. For example the development of printing technology expanded the possibility of distributing knowledge into new dimensions. Understanding the fundamental structures and mechanisms of technology and technological development is one of the central interest of philosophy of technology. Although recently there is a growing interest in research on philosophy of technology, social perspectives and the questions of social ontology of technology are undermined in these investigations. The aim of this book is to investigate the philosophy of technical things and discuss the subject from two relevant perspectives: Technical things as physical or material objects and technical things as social or cultural things. Moreover the book aims at explicating an ontological account of technical things that integrates these two perspectives together.