SIG: Languages of Technology: Prompts, Scripts, Narratives, and Grammars of Composition

Chairs: Leonie Möck and Wenzel Mehnert, with support from Mark Coeckelbergh and Alfred Nordmann

Goal: To build a network for the academic exchange on “Languages of Technology”

Format: Research activities such as a monthly online lunch lecture, discussion series on conferences, and an international workshop series

Period: January 2025-December 2026

Contact: Leonie Möck, University of Vienna, Austria: leonie.moeck@univie.ac.at; and Wenzel Mehnert, Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria, & Technical University of Berlin, Germany: wenzel.mehnert@ait.ac.at

Description:

The SIG seeks to understand how we talk about technology, how technology talks to us, how we talk mediated through technologies, and investigates the situated codes and practices of assembly and design. Several clusters of key- or catchwords can serve to illustrate the concerns that fall under the heading Languages of Technology and that explain an interest in exploring these in their relation to each other. One such cluster of terms is „vision assessment, socio-technical imaginaries, futuring“, another comprises „technology games, forms of life, critical infrastructures“, yet another „design thinking, principles of compositions, shape grammars“, and a fourth includes „hermeneutics of technology, opening the black box, sense-making“.

With the SIG, we build on SPT related activities such as the 2017 SPT meeting, featuring a special focus on the „Grammar of Things“, the 2020 founded journal „Technology and Language“, and recent increases of attention to language processing technologies, large language models, and robotic voices. We forge a network not only for discussion and reflection but for doing things together. These activities include regular online lectures, co-organized conference contributions and a workshop series that investigates local nodes of language and technology.

Altogether, we expect that the combination of offline and online interactions will spill over and carry our interest in the philosophy of technology into various disciplinary and practice settings. The network of the SIG is open to anybody working on the themes addressed, and we want to encourage members of SPT to join the group and participate in the events and activities.

SPT members and others interested in joining this special interest group are invited to contact the chairs or join the email list by using this link: https://lists.univie.ac.at/mailman/listinfo/langtech (or by sending an email to leonie.moeck@univie.ac.at)