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Do you speak technology?

On grammars of technology

Mario Kaiser

1 Finite infiniteness

There is a fascinating similarity between languages and certain technologies. In

both cases we find a sort of grammar, logic or syntax with one purpose: A finite

alphabet and a finite set of rules enable almost infinite combinations. For the time

being we suppress the many objections of poststructuralism that cast doubts on the

assumption of ‘finite rules’. For now, an understanding of an inventory of

relatively finite rules vis-à-vis a relatively infinite corpus of possible combinations

is more than sufficient.

It is exactly this phenomenon that Noam Chomsky has used in order to explain the

rapid language acquisition by children. Sooner or later, they are capable of

comprehending sentences they have never heard before. According to Chomsky, a

behaviorist approach of language learning fails in this respect. A highly limited set

of external stimuli and parental reinforcements is unsuitable to bring about a

mastery of language that encompasses an endless number of sentences (Chomsky

1959a).

I would like to put forward the hypothesis that our understanding of technologies

can profit from such a grammatical account. The combinatorial competence of

speakers to create and understand an infinite number of utterances on the basis of a

finite amount of rules I take as not only being at work in the domain of language,

but also in the domain of technology. Here, too, we find such a competence on the

side of developers and designers as well as on the side of users, albeit in a different

amount. In contrast to Chomsky, however, the hypothesis does not implicate

further assumptions about the innateness of linguistic or technological knowledge.

It rather claims that the grammars of technology are historically grown, highly

different and co-constructed by ‘soft’ society and ‘hard’ technology. Still, they are

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of a nature, which provides for their learnability and their mastery. The credibility

of this theoretical suggestion depends on four issues.

First, we have to get accustomed to a technological grammar via a simple case

study. By taking up a critical comment of novelist Douglas Coupland, we will

consider the playing with LEGO bricks as a kind of technological literacy, namely

the mastery of a so called context free grammar. This simple, yet formalistically

consistent grammar helps to assign important concepts required to expand the

hypothesis in further detail.

Second, we need to profile the perspective on technologies as grammars. For this

aim, we equate technologies with languages, in order to demarcate the grammatical

account from a semantic one, which asks about the meaning of technology such as

for humankind, for society, or for politics. Similarly, our approach will be

distinguished from a semiotic viewpoint focusing on the significance of

materialities. To be sure, the materiality of a particular technology is of utmost

importance. However, we regard the material’s constraints and enablements as part

of the game. They belong to the rules the relevant grammar counts on. Finally, the

grammatical perspective separates itself from a pragmatist understanding that

predominantly focuses on the notion of action. We will circumvent the tedious

debate on ‘Who is acting? Humans or technological artefacts?’ by highlighting the

conditions of the possibility of action. These consist in nothing more and nothing

less than the rules of a particular grammar.

Third, the hypothesis is also measured according to its conceptual output. Do we

succeed in redefining basic notions relevant for a philosophy of technology? Three

vague concepts wait for explanation: technology, technological artefacts, and

technique as practice. These clarifications afford us the opportunity to briefly

review the objections stemming from poststructuralism.

Fourth, we have to clarify the question, to which the grammatical approach is the

answer. Why should we take this proposal into account at the beginning of the 21th

century? Above all, several sociological as well as philosophical diagnoses have in

recent years drawn the picture of a society deeply transformed and structured by

and through technology. These and similar diagnoses cannot be brushed aside any

longer. However, their diagnostic accuracy seldom goes hand in hand with a theory

explaining the seamless web (Hughes 1986), society and technology is woven in.

Apprehending technology along the lines of a grammar on the one hand, of

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technological literacy on the other, may help to understand, why we have become

acquainted to technology in a similar way as to language.

2 The grammar of Lego

Now, I think it is safe to say that Lego is a potent three-dimensional

modeling tool and a language in itself. And prolonged exposure to any

language, either visual or verbal, doubtless alters the way a child

perceives his or her universe (Coupland 1994).

Douglas Coupland wrote this passage on the occasion of a trip to Legoland, after

having spent some time with hardware and software engineers in Silicon Valley.

Against the background of these encounters with the artificial, Coupland speculates

on the ontological as well as on the logical common ground of Lego and personal

computers.

“First, Lego is ontologically not unlike computers. This is to say that a

computer by itself is, well, nothing. Computers only become

something when given a specific application. Ditto Lego. […]

Second, Lego is ‘binary’– a yes/no structure; that is to say, the little

nubblies atop any given Lego block are either connected to another

unit of Lego, or they are not. Analog relationships do not exist”

(ibid.).

Both, the ontological (or functional) indeterminacy and the discrete logic of Lego

bricks arouse the suspicion that playing Lego is like following the rules of a

grammar. In fact, a research group associated to the Geometric and Intelligent

Computing Laboratory of Drexel University (Regli 2014) has dedicated some

efforts to the specification of a context sensitive grammar designed to handle 3D-

structures assembled from Lego blocks, axles, wheels etc.1 Generally, a context

sensitive grammar is a formal grammar with the requirement, that some

nonterminal symbols can be substituted only in a given context (cf. Chomsky

1959b). The history of the applied rules therefore is, particularly in contrast to

context free grammars, relevant. It narrows the range of symbols which can be

1 The corresponding document shows no authorship. Insofar as a conference poster (Regli, Peysakhov, und Galinskaya 2000a) recapitulates the main findings of the Lego grammar paper, I have attributed to it the same authorship (Regli, Peysakhov, und Galinskaya 2000b).

Kommentar [AK1]: nächste Satz nicht noch erläutert werden?

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added to the existing chain of symbols. In simple words, on a Lego module with a

brick shape you can place a brick, but no axle. Besides the grammar’s elements,

which are terminal and nonterminal symbols (in this case Lego blocks, plates,

gears, axles etc.), the grammar also consists in a set of production rules. They

specify which symbols can be combined with others in order to build complex

elements belonging to that grammar. In the Lego case, such a rule could be:

Block Block or Block | Connect � ↑ Snap [Border Pair] ↑ Snap [Peg Pair, Peg Pair] Block Block Block

A single application of this rule could be:

Brick (2,2)

↑ Snap [(4,1), (4,1); (1,1), (1,1)]

Brick (4,2)

Illustration 1: Application of the directed Snap rule (Regli, Peysakhov, und Galinskaya 2000b, 4 [slightly modified])

The rule stated above is part of higher ordered rules specifying the position of

Block within complex modules or more basic elements (nonterminal symbols).

Module Module or Element � ↑ Connect Module Module Module or Module � | Connect Module Module Element � Block or Disk Block Block or Block | Connect � ↑ Snap [Border Pair] ↑ Snap [Peg Pair, Peg Pair] Block Block Block

Table 1: Some production rules of a Lego grammar

(for the complete grammer cf. Regli, Peysakhov, und Galinskaya 2000b, 7f. )

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Such production rules specify all the valid words, sentences, or texts (or valid Lego

modules) belonging to the language generated by the grammar in question.2 The

Lego grammar demonstrates in at least three aspects, that particular technologies

can and should be conceived by way of a grammatical account.

First, the number of rules specified in the relevant document is finite. There are 13

instructions of how to produce an infinite number of Lego modules on the basis of

finite elements. Independent of this grammar, the Lego Company makes a similar,

yet less formalistic statement about the combinatorial logic of its artefacts. It states

that six eight-stud Lego bricks (2x4) can be combined in 915’103’765 different

ways. Two eight-stud LEGO bricks can be combined in 24 different ways and three

eight-stud LEGO bricks in 1’060 ways (LEGO Company 2014). In view of this

immense surplus of combinations compared to the very limited resources of

elements and rules, one is again tempted to agree with Chomsky in his rejection of

a behavioristic approach of language acquisition. With respect to Lego, this implies

that for parents it should be sufficient to teach their children some basic principles

of combination or rules of production so that they can build an almost infinite array

of Lego devices.3

Secondly, one might accept Coupland’s observation that a Lego brick by itself is

nothing. Like computers, Lego bricks only become something when given a

specific application. On a closer look, however, one notices that the significance,

meaning or function of a Lego brick is not just nothing, but is recursively defined

by the grammar in which it plays a role. It somewhat reminds of a pluripotent stem

cell able to play different functions in different tissues. Taken as a rough

approximation, however, Coupland’s diagnosis seems to be correct. Still, there is

more to it than that. For it gives us a conceptual distinction at hand with which we

can distinguish between technological artefact and technology. A technological

artefact is the product of a technology. The technology itself is the grammar that

allows for the rule based construction of a technological artefact. In contrast to a

technological artefact, a technology itself has, in Coupland’s words, no purpose, no

meaning, and no end. It is just defined by its material constituents and the rules

aimed for constructing particular technological objects. In a formalistic way, a

technology amounts to a grammar G=(N,T,P,S) with

2 Basically, all modules can be recognized and disassembled down to its building blocks by a Turing machine. 3 Personally, I can only emphasize this Chomskyan perspective. My eight year old ‘expert’ creates almost each day a spaceship with nearly no resemblances to the one of the day before.

Kommentar [AK2]: stabil

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• nonterminal symbols N

• terminal symbols T

• a start symbol S

• production rules P.

Compared to such a technological grammar, a technological artefact is like a

particular word, sentence, or text generated or instantiated by the corresponding

grammar4.

Third, we introduce the notion of technological literacy in order to capture the

mastery of a technological grammar by subjects. Technological literacies represent

a subset of the Greek téchnai, or, later on, of the artes liberales and the artes

mechanicae. In contrast to the discrete logic of a formal grammar, literacy is a

matter of degree, however, loosely measured against the competence of an ideal

speaker-listener (Chomsky 1965, 3). With regard to technologies, such literacy can

be found on both sides, on the side of the users and on the side of the developers or

engineers. Particularly Lego testifies to the fact that the difference between both

sides is a highly gradual one, since the performance of many Lego ‘amateurs’

frequently challenges the one of developers. However, there is a remarkable social

difference between users and developers. Only the latter are able to change the

rules of the Lego grammar – often to the great displeasure of the users as the recent

history of Lego shows.5,6

Besides this (social) gradedness, the Lego case additionally illustrates the almost

seamless connection between technological and literal literacy. At least if one gives

credit to some teaching books, the willingness and easiness of pupils to learn

English grammar can be drastically increased by means of Lego constructions. The

short description of the book Lego Grammar: Making Grammar Fun (Rippy 2013)

reads like a down-to-earth confirmation of our theoretical hypothesis:

4 Due to space restrictions, we cannot elaborate on the relationship between examples of a grammar and the grammar itself. Still, it seems that Chomsky defends a two-world theory. The first world consists in an ideal grammar that produces the texts, words or sentences of the second, the ‘real’ world. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, can be interpreted as advocating a one world theory. The difference of examples of a grammar and the grammar itself is not a metaphysically given, but constructed by the participants of language games. I am grateful to Andreas Kaminsiki for this clarification. 5 For example, the introduction of the theme Lego Friends has been accompanied by various critics complaining about the gender stereotypes as well as about the bad connectivity and modularity of the components. By the end of January 2012 more than 50’000 people has signed a petition on Change.org requesting Lego to change “selling out girls” (Shoemaker Richards und Cole 2014) 6 Such a social stratification is commonly absent in the case of language. Still, the mere existence of language teaching in schools suggests that language acquisition involves some authority without being necessarily based on it.

Kommentar [AK3]: Feinheit seit: Aber ich würde es nicht als Wittgensteins Gedanken verstehen, dass die Grammatik Sätze produziert. Dies legt dann nämlich eine zwei-Bereiche Vorstellung nahe: Die Regeln liegen jenseits der Sprache. Wittgensteins Gedanke scheint mir vielmehr zu sein, dass es nicht in den Sprachspielen eine Gebrauchsanweisung gibt, die jenseits des Spiels steht, sondern dass sich im Spielen die Regeln zeigen und sind – denn es kann ja von der Spielanleitung abgewichen werden. Auch entsteht, wenn man eine Spielanleitung annimmt, welche hinter den Zügen steht und diese produziert, das Problem, dass dann wiederum festgelegt werden muss, wie man die Spielanleitung versteht. Sinnvoller erscheint mir daher die folgende Wittgenstein-Interpretation: Die Regeln sind unsere Betrachtungsweise des Gebrauchs – sie sind etwas, was die Züge durchzieht – und als Aspekt des aktuellen Gebrauchs immer in den Blick genommen werden können. Sie existieren abjenseits dieses Gebrauchs.

Kommentar [AK4]: Vergleichbares gibt es in der Sprache nicht. Ansonsten müsste man doch ein Wittgenstein ganz ferne Konventionstheorie annehmen (mit Personen, welche diese Konventionen in einem Akt beschließen)

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How can LEGOs actually have any connection to grammar? It is

simple. As you already know, sentences are made up of a word or

group of words that are connected together and communicate

independently. LEGOs are an expressive way to design and create

structures through connections of the blocks. The key word here for

both is connect.

The smooth transition from a technological to a literal literacy, however, should not

seduce us assuming a transcendental grammatical capacity in the sense of

Chomsky’s universal grammar. There are technological grammars like cooking,

which only have a very limited affiliation to the linguistic one. Nevertheless, they

share with all technological grammars the feature of finite rules and almost infinite

combinations.

3 The lógos of technology

The old Greek word lógos has an immense spectrum of meanings, ranging from

‘speech’, ’language’, and ‘order’ through to ‘theory’ and ‘doctrine’. We use it in

terms of ‘language’ in order to convey important distinctions from the philosophy

of language to the philosophy of technology. We will metaphorically speak of

technologies as languages, so as to reconsider technology with respect to four

approaches, namely

1. a semantic analysis of the meaning(s) of technology

2. a semiotic account of the significance of technological materialities

3. a pragmatist approach to sociotechnical inter-actions

4. a grammatical perspective on technology.

In the following, we use the first three approaches to contrast them with the

grammatical viewpoint.

3.1 Semantics

The semantic analysis is to a great extent coextensive with approaches, Carl

Mitcham (1994) subsumed under the notion of humanities philosophy of

technology. Most of them share a hermeneutical interest in technology and, based

on that, an interest in its meaning for X. The X serves as a placeholder for

metaphysics (e.g. Martin Heidegger), politics (e.g. Langdon Winner), society (e.g.

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Lewis Mumford), or man (e.g. Helmuth Plessner).7 The strength of these accounts

consist in their philosophical ambition, namely to get to the heart of technology. At

the same time, this will to understand technology in its one essence, substance or

ultimate meaning also represents a weakness. In comparison with a grammatical

account, they are incapable of conceiving different orders of technology – orders,

with their own purpose, grammar, and specific configuration of technology and

society.

In a synchronic instead of a diachronic way, a grammatical account pursues a goal

similar to the one Foucault was after in his Order of Things (1970). He claims that

since the Renaissance different episteme have succeeded one other, however, not in

slow supersession, but with at least two radical breaks between them. The thus

separated episteme have become incommensurable. Although Foucault has later on

withdrawn the concept of episteme due to its too transcendental status, his project

to map diachronic orders of things still acts as a corrective to the one-technology-

one-meaning approach common in the humanities philosophy of technology. If we

admit that grammars of technology may change and do not reside a transcendental

realm of ideality, a similar research agenda opens up, namely to map synchronic

orders of technology.

There is one exception to the overlapping of semantic analysis and humanities

philosophy of technology. It consists in the deflationary and everyday conception

of technology as a means to an end. The meaning of a technological artefact is

simply given by its purpose, end or télos. For a long time, this conception was

almost all too true. A screwdriver is a means to drive a screw. A bicycle pump is a

means to pump the tires of a bicycle. A CD player is a means to play a CD. Maybe

it is just a historical coincidence that the first mention of a philosophy of

technology by Ernst Kapp (1877) collapses with the Industrial Revolution that has

permanently destroyed this simple conception of technology. The invention of the

steam machine or the spinning mule simultaneously represents the invention of a

multi-purpose technology with an extensive field of application. Since then, we

witness a constant overdetermination of means over ends. Various technologies

have acquired the status of media – machines that make more things possible than

required for particular purposes (Gamm 2000). However, it is the aim of a

grammatical account not to stop at this point of reflection, since the notion of

media is often too amorphous, as it blinds out the combinatorial logic or grammar

7 For a more accurate and less straw man like characterization of the different positions, cf. Mitcham (1994), Fohler (2003) or Nordmann (2008).

Kommentar [AK5]: systematischen Gründen dazu nicht in der Lage? Oder ist es bloß mehr oder weniger kontingenter Weise nicht in diesem Sinne verwendet worden? Wenn ersteres: Dann die Gründe zumindest kurz umreißen.

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involved in the production of the media’s elements. In many cases a grammatical

analysis may thus help to open the obscured media in order to reveal a certain order

governing the media’s combinations.

3.2 Semiotics

In the wake of the slogan to open the black box of science (Whitley 1972), Science

& Technology Studies have also concentrated their attention to the black box of

technology, so as to reconstruct the social and contingent conditions that has led to

the construction of a technological artefact (Bijker, Hughes, und Pinch 1987). In a

now famous move away from this social constructivist program, Bruno Latour

(1999 [1992]) and others have argued that analyzing technology against the sole

background of society amounts to a zero-sum situation, implying that technology is

nothing else than a combination of social factors. A purely social constructivist

approach therefore leaves open the question, to what extent technology is different

from society. Only if social and technical components are brought together in an

Actor-Network-Theory (Latour 2005; Law und Hassard 1999), there is a chance to

get an idea of how technological artefacts enrich society by new behaviors, new

routines, and new things. Especially for examining the natural or technical part of

technology, a semiotic account has been proposed. Above all, it deals with the

significance of the materialities involved in the construction of technological

devices as well as in the usage of them. It indeed makes a difference, whether a

hotel manager asks his guests verbally, to deposit the keys at the reception before

leaving the house, or whether he attaches a heavy weight to the keys, so that the

guests deposit them voluntarily (Latour 2000).On the basis of an array of semiotic

studies, Latour and others have convincingly shown how things and their

materialities sociologically really count.

The grammatical account fully agrees with this semiotic emphasis on material and

form. The Lego grammar specified above would be meaningless, if the little

nubblies atop a Lego brick did not exist. Additionally, the Lego grammar works

only because of the standardized dimensions (cf. illustration 2).

Kommentar [AK6]: bedeutet.

Kommentar [AK7]: sich hierbei um eine semiotische Analyse? Verwendet

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Illustration 2: Lego dimensions (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego)

In contrast to the semiotic approach, a grammatical consideration of technology

aims at a more systematic conception of materialities and their characteristic

behaviors. The case studies of Latour and his followers usually focus on one

technological artefact, in order to reveal the assemblage of human and non-human

ingredients that have become texted in this single piece of technology.8 The

grammatical account emphasizes technologies as orders, instead. Hence,

materialities and their behaviors gain another explanatory role. They are significant

not just per se, but as constituents of an overarching grammar that renders them

meaningful. Take the transistor as example. For a semiotic approach almost every

social and material ingredient of it could be of utmost importance:

• Who are the inventors of it? Is it really the case that Bardeen, Shockley and

Brattain were the first?

• What is a transistor composed of? What materials are required for isolating

the Gate from the current between Source and Drain?

The answers to these and similar questions are important, undoubtedly. However,

we have to make a decision as to what theoretically counts. Given the grammar

perspective, the transistor is of interest, since its eccentric behavior enabled an

unexpected and asynchronous marriage with the logic of George Boole or with

what has later become known as Boolean algebra. Within this framework, a

transistor counts as a device able to switch between ‘on’ and ‘off’, ‘true’ and

‘false’, ‘0’ and ‘1’ depending on its input. Since its integration into this logic, the

significance of a transistor’s material and form is still of importance, whereas in a

8 In fact, we owe to these case studies clairvoyant /unklar/ insights into the societal significance of sleeping policemen, seat belts, or keys. The problematic aspect, however, consists in the blurring of description and explanation or rather in the complete withdrawal of explanation. The thick description of a technological artefact, of its construction and of its embeddedness in society is according to Actor-Network-Theory the whole story. Simply, there is no need for theory (cf. Latour 2005, 136ff.).

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negative way. The more it vanishes, the more it is appreciated.9 Ironically,

transistors have traversed the career from a few heroes to billions of slaves. Such a

career can only be understood in terms of a submission under a particular logic or a

technological grammar that has abstracted from each transistor its individual

semiotic character. We may here refer to the distinction between a necessary and

sufficient condition. The particular materialities of a transistor are a necessary

condition, yet it is its capacity to act as a switch that is a sufficient condition for

playing a role in a technology.

3.3 Pragmatics

The last conception of technology as language rests on the notion of action. This

pragmatist approach is the most sociological one, since it asks for the interaction

between subjects and technological objects or, quite generally, between society and

technology. At the core of it, we find the same theory of technology as in the

deflationary approach of semantics. Technology is a means to an end, whereas the

latter is thought of as the intention of an action. Given the purpose to travel from

point A to point B, we may then ask for the appropriate way to reach this goal.

Shall we walk or shall we drive? The car or the bicycle is just an efficient means

for our action, namely to travel from A to B. The theory works as long as our

intentions or ends are held constant. Yet exactly this assumption is very

implausible. Almost every technological artefact has the agency, capability or

propensity to substantially change our intentions. Without public transportation, we

cannot even imagine the intention to live in Basel and to work in Zurich. Without

paper it is just abstruse to have the intention to read or write a book. Since

technological objects have such a profound influence on our intentions, a

pragmatist approach sooner or later runs into the problem of who is acting: us or

them? Insofar as there already are meters of books dealing with this question, we

cannot hope to solve it within the next few lines (cf. Searle 1984; Dreyfus 1994;

Collins 1993; Collins und Kusch 1998; Christaller und Wehner 2003).

We just circumvent the debate by leaving aside such notions as intentions, let alone

intentionality, subjects, cyborgs, things, inter-activity or inter-passivity. All of them

require too much subjective meaning in Max Weber’s terms (1922, §1). For a

grammatical account it is negligible, whether we deal with technology in the modus

operandi of (intentional) action or of (animalistic) behavior. What counts,

9 As of 2012, the highest transistor count in a commercially available CPU is over 2.5 billion transistors, in Intel's 10-core Xeon Westmere-EX.

Kommentar [AK8]:

Kommentar [AK9]: einfügen

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however, are the conditions of possibility of both. We take them to be given in the

form of various grammars.

We may borrow from Wittgenstein the notion of a game, in order to talk about

different technology games. Not unlike the usual games, most of them exhibit an

interesting feature. You can play the same game several times, each time with a

different ending. Surely, there are games like Nine Men's Morris (or Mills), which

are ‘solved games’ and therefore have calculable combinations.10 The ratio

between possible combinations and rules, however, still allows for imputing a

grammar. Such a grammar comes up with a few commitments and a lot of

entitlements (cf. Brandom 1994). As soon as you understand the rules and commit

yourself to them, you are entitled to perform an impressive array of actions or

behaviors. Your understanding of the grammar gives you the opportunity, if not

freedom to articulate intentions you may have never had before.

In direct comparison to a pragmatist theory of technology, the grammatical

perspective considers the understanding of a technology’s rules as prior to and as

more interesting than the question as to how technological artefacts change our

intentions. For a technological grammar equipped with its specific mix of

commitments and entitlements is the condition of possibility of having this or that

intention, of acting with this or that subjective meaning or of just behaving in this

or that respect.

Summarized, a grammatical approach comes up with some good reasons making it

a valuable candidate in the contention for understanding technology. For the sake

of comparability, various philosophies of technology have been, admittedly in a

rather casual way, reformulated as contributions to the question, inasmuch

technologies correspond to languages. With respect to semantic approaches, the

grammatical account insists on different orders of technology. It thus seeks to

evade the dilemma of subsuming all technologies under one meaning on the one

hand (e.g. technology as a Heideggerian Ge-stell), or of getting lost in too much

meanings of countless different technological artefacts on the other hand (e.g. the

meaning of screwdriver is to drive screw a screw). Compared to semiotic accounts,

the grammatical perspective defends a kind of holism that helps to separate

relevant material or formal significances from irrelevant ones. The relevance is

recursively defined by the grammatical or logical order. Finally, the pragmatist

conception of technology has been criticized for its being stuck in unresolvable

10 Anyhow, there are about 10 billion different mid- and endgame positions (Gasser 1993).

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problems of authorship and intentionality. Compared with this, the grammatical

account aims at highlighting the conditions of possibility of acting within a

technological grammar.

4 Clarifications

The grammatical account has much in common with an epistemology of

technology as outlined by Henryk Skolimowski (1966). Above all, both are in

agreement about the difference of technology and science.

In science we investigate the reality that is given; in technology we

create a reality according to our designs. [… ] In short, science

concerns itself with what is, technology with what is to be (ibid.,

374f.).

To use again a notion from the philosophy of language, science and technology

have another direction of fit (cf. Searle 1979; Humberstone 1992).11 In contrast to

science with its word-to-world direction, technology is a normative endeavor. It

designs solutions for problems, needs, and desires of society, but it expects that

subjects, actors or society learn the technology in order to use these solutions.

Technology has thus a world-to-word or, to be more precise, a world-to-grammar

direction of fit.

Remember Husserl’s (and Frege’s) refutation of psychologism as an effort to

explain logic on the basis of empirical psychology. Among other things,

psychologism is accused of failing to enlighten error. If a child wrongly adds two

numbers (eg. 23 + 11 = 32), psychologism cannot account for the difference

between truth and what-is-taken-to-be-true. If the laws of arithmetic or logic were

empirical laws of thought, then we would never commit fallacies. Truth and what-

is-taken-to-be-true were the same. On the other hand, a psychological interpretation 11 Although Science & Technology Studies have rightly emphasized the overlapping of both domains (cf. Latour und Woolgar 1986; Knorr Cetina 1981) and although current technoscience actively performs this blurring (cf. Carrier und Nordmann 2011), science and technology still allow for a separation according to their claims – at least. In the domain of science, theories, hypotheses, and assertions claim to be concerned with reality or with what there is. In doing so, they exhibit a word-to-world direction of fit. This pursuit for truth does not preclude that the world, science seeks to cope with, undergoes heavy modifications, interventions, and constructions, in order to be ready for being described correctly (cf. Hacking 1983). Though, the word-to-world claim of science still represents the reason why reality is adjusted to match this truth claim. And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ (Goethe, The Erl-King, translated by Edgar A. Bowring)

Kommentar [AK10]: Nordmann: eine bloße Umkehrung? Kein Änderungswunsch oder Korrekturvorschlag oder Monitum – aber ein Diskussionsbedarf irgendwann einmal meinerseits...

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of logic cannot explain why some inferences are valid and others invalid (Husserl

2012, § 31). Here, we do not delve into a vindication or refutation of psychologism

(cf. Kusch 1995). We are merely interested in the similarity of technology and

logic with regard to their normative structure or their world-to-word direction of

fit.12

Against this difference between science and technology, we finally have to

distinguish between technological artefacts, technology (as grammar), and

technique.

4.1 Technological artefacts and conditions of satisfaction

To begin with technological artefacts, we are interested in them not on a semiotic

basis focusing on their particularity and exceptionality. Rather, we take them as

combinatorial results of an underlying technological grammar. Such technological

outcomes could be a delicious meal as the result of the cultural grammar of

cooking (Lévi-Strauss 1969), a spacecraft as the result of the Lego grammar, a

computer application as the result of the grammar of a programming language or a

tranquilizer as the result of a subset of the pharmaceutical grammar concerned with

benzodiazepines.

However, there is one feature that makes technological artefacts indispensable even

for a grammatical account of technology, since they provide for the conditions of

satisfaction. In logic or arithmetic, those consist in the validity of a particular

logical conclusion or calculation. ‘23 + 11 = 32’ is invalid, whereas ‘23 + 11 = 34’

is valid. In material based technologies, the conditions commonly comprise the

criterion, whether a device works (or not). This condition is normative in exactly

the same way as the condition of validity. Think of a computer with a strangely

behaving transistor in the CPU. In comparison to the myriads of its colleagues, it

suddenly begins to invert its switching behavior. Although the transistor’s failing

can be explained physically and thus causally, its behavior is plainly wrong. The

computer does not work properly anymore. This example underlines once again the

normative aspect of technology, even in the case of hardware based technologies.

12 Remarkably, the English version of Husserl’s Logical Investigations translates the notion of ‘Kunstlehre’ with ‘technology’, suggesting that logic can be viewed as technology proper: “Where the basic norm is an end or can become an end, the normative discipline by a ready extension of its task gives rise to a technology. This occurs in this case too. […] [I]t is therefore wholly appropriate, in view of the unquestionable value of such a technology, that the concept of logic should be correspondingly widened, and should be defined in its sense” (Husserl 2012, §12 [p. 26]).

15

Lego constructions instead have multiple conditions of satisfaction ranging from

well-built over to looking like the real thing. A meal in turn has conditions of

satisfaction that are deeply engraved in culture and society making up what is

counted as good taste (cf. Bourdieu 1984)

Although the conditions of satisfaction target technological artefacts fore and

foremost, the evaluation of them recursively depends on the corresponding

grammar and its rules of production. Similar to scientific hypotheses, a

technological construction does not face the tribunal of society all alone, but most

backed up by the corporate body of its grammar.

4.2 Technological grammars and poststructuralism

Looking at technology as a grammar, invites us to regard technologies as

composed of two finite sets. On the one hand, there is the finite alphabet of

elements, on the other hand, the finite set of production rules aimed to create

complex elements in an almost infinite number. In the grammar of cooking as well

as in the grammar of programming languages, for instance, complex elements may

enter the grammar in a ready-made, black-boxed manner. In this respect, there is no

fundamental difference between a purchased bouillon and, as concerns object-

oriented programming languages, a Java library object encapsulating basic methods

of reading in files.

Speaking of a technology as a grammar, sooner or later provokes poststructuralist

objections. Such a doubt might be put forward as follows:

If anything, Jacques Derrida has proven that Lévi-Strauss’ assumption

of finite rules presupposes a transcendental center or a prime

principle. Such a center or principle, however, has according to

Derrida never been part of reality, but rather is the result of a

misguided logo- and ethnocentristic thinking. It is the origin-oriented

thinking of western metaphysics that has created such ‘centers’ or

‘principles’ (freely paraphrasing a possible critic of structuralism and

other systemic approaches)

Giving credit to such an objection, there are two ways to answer it. Both of them

are relevant for a grammatical perspective. The first answer concedes that in fact

such things as ‘centers’ or ‘principles’ are the results of metaphysical thinking, but

have nevertheless a foundation in society, as the latter safeguards these centers as

Kommentar [AK11]: „adapted“, sondern ausgedacht?

16

important pillars i.e. institutions. The second answer seeks to retain the idea of a

grammar with finite rules, but admits that nothing prevents it to change over time.

Both answers can be condensed in the very helpful notion of contingent

foundations, coined by Judith Butler (1992).

In contrast to some branches in philosophy of science, the first answer comes quite

naturally to philosophy of technology. For it has simply to concede that a

technology’s grammar does not reside a realm of platonic ideas, but is an

institution of and in society. Take the programming language Java as an example.

Around the early 1990s, it started as a project with two goals: first, to provide a

simplified and less unambiguous version of the dominant programming languages

C and C++; second, to specify the ideal environment for running Java code. At this

time, the grammar of Java was little more than project with a compiler and virtual

machine. A series of fortunate circumstances have yet transformed this fragile

project into an institution almost impossible to abandon cold turkey. Most

programming courses at high schools rely on Java, the operating system Android

requests applications written in Java, and thanks to the Java virtual machine, Java

code can be executed on almost every device with a CPU. Due to its heavy

integration in society, Java has become the most used programming language and

therefore almost a fundament, center or principle of our digital world. Similar

considerations can be applied to Lego as a historically grown institution in the

children’s room of our society.

Faced with this answer, poststructuralism has still a chance to complain regarding

technologies as grammars. Above all, it might object the bold simplicity of the Java

example, because Java has been designed as a grammar with strict and explicit

rules to comply with it. Yet, what about cooking?

The second answer to poststructuralism is more ambitious as it has to deal with

such soft grammars like cooking, which may drastically change depending on its

output, i.e. techno-grammatical products. Particularly in comparison to a ‘hard’

formal language like Java, we may define ‘soft’ in the following way. A soft

grammar is characterized by its potential of absorbing anomalies. An anomaly in

turn is defined as a mixture of two features: first, a compliance with the

corresponding grammar; second, a deviation of the very same grammar. The first

feature explains that the anomaly is an anomaly of the grammar in question – and

not just an anomaly per se, completely detached from its context. The second

feature explains the surprising surplus, poststructuralism lays so much stress on.

17

Such a conceptual starting point helps to estimate the problem of poststructuralism:

How does a technological artefact, taken as an anomaly, relate to ‘its’ grammar? Is

the relevant technology qualified to change even some of its basic rules, in order to

adapt to the anomaly? If so, do we still talk about the ‘same’ technology after such

a fundamental change? Since Quine’s reevaluation of the difference between

analytic and synthetic statements (1980 [1951]), it has become an empirical

question as to what is regarded as a basic instead of an auxiliary rule. In this vein,

we cannot answer the question on a priori basis, whether some ‘core’ rules of a

grammar support or refuse an anomaly.

Two rather extreme examples may illustrate the complex decision problem we

have to deal with, when confronted with anomalies. Both of them testify to the fact,

that there are no principal, analytic or a priori reasons that help us to decide

whether an anomaly can be incorporated into a grammar or not. Moreover, both

cases illustrate that the decision, whether a particular technology is as a soft or a

hard one, involves a consideration of the whole technology. A close examination of

some rules deemed as basic or fundamental does not do the job.

• Think first of eating a meal in an outstanding restaurant specialized in

molecular gastronomy. The meal’s taste exceeds all your technological

knowledge and literacy of cooking.13 If you estimate this meal still as a

meal, nothing prevents you from trying to incorporate the production rules

of it into your own repertoire. Maybe you will succeed in aligning some

rules of molecular gastronomy with the rules you already master in your

kitchen. In this case, we may speak of cooking as a soft technology

allowing you to expand and modify its rules in a rather flexible way.

• Think second of an alternative usage of an element of a technological

grammar. For instance, you can melt down differently colored LEGO

bricks so that they form a nicely patterned plate. In doing so, you employ

them for a rather different ‘technological game’ with new rules or even

with a new grammar. In this case, we may speak of Lego as a hard

technology, which, in contrast to cooking, has far stronger restrictions

concerning the incorporation of anomalies.

Nevertheless, even in the case of a soft technology like cooking we don’t want to

give up the idea of a grammar with finite rules and finite elements making up the

13 Interestingly, Ferran Adrià, the cook of the famous El Bulli restaurant in Spain, declared his approach of molecular gastronomy as ‘deconstructivist’.

Kommentar [AK12]: Nordmann: Spannnender Vorschlag

18

alphabet of a technology. Even if poststructuralism suggests that it is a misguided

metaphysical endeavor trying to reduce an endless stream of phenomena to a finite

set of ‘principles’ or ‘centers’, we still adhere to this impossible task. However,

with the notion of contingent foundations we allow the grammars of technology to

include two features: first, they are socially constructed and located in the midst of

society which in turn decides as to which rules belong to a grammar and which not.

Secondly, the grammars of technology are neither cut in stone nor ultimately fixed

in our minds or brains. Sometimes as fast as fashion, sometimes as slow as church

rituals they change over time. This fact, however, does not preclude that at a

particular moment in time the finite set of rules can be identified by philosophy of

technology or played with by engineers or users.

4.3 Techniques and technological literacy

Riding a bicycle, crocheting, skiing, or making pottery are techniques. Independent

of whether they belong to the domain of sports, to the antique artes liberales or the

medieval artes mechanicae, almost all of them have a common feature. They

require practice. Even if you know a lot about painting, about the techniques used

by artists like Rembrandt or Rubens, about pigments and paint brushes, you still

don’t know how to paint. The mangle of practice, as Andrew Pickering (1995)

appropriately labeled it, seems to be almost necessary for the mastery of a

technique. The same applies to technological literacy. Here again, the mix of

resistance and accommodation, characteristic of Pickering’s mangle of practice,

governs the mastery of a technological grammar. Even in the case of ‘literal’

literacy, writers have often long lasting fights with the recalcitrance of language.

However, although technological literacies, each of it conceived of as the mastery

of a technological grammar, form a subset of the immense spectrum of techniques,

they seem to involve a sort of understanding that goes beyond the notion of

practice. In the Lego case, practice can be defined as the ability to build

constructions according to instructions (cf. Illustration 3).

Kommentar [AK13]: recalcitrance

19

Illustration 3: Lego instructions (http://horst-lehner.mausnet.de/lego/technic/instruct/8832/index.htm)

A similar form of practice is required in the case of cooking with recipes. Such a

practiced and subsequently embodied execution of instructions is a necessary, yet

by far not a sufficient condition for technological literacy. We only begin to master

a technological grammar, when we begin to realize the difference between

instructions and rules. We need instructions for achieving a specific goal, for

building a specific spacecraft or for preparing a specific meal. Rules, instead, are of

a more general nature. They specify actions not only for a specific case, but for a

whole domain, which is the grammar’s alphabet of elements.

The difference between instructions and rules has two important consequences. On

the one hand, an instruction has more or less a one-to-one ratio of commitment and

entitlement. If you commit yourself to follow an instruction, you are entitled to

perform just one action. A rule – at least in terms of a production rule – comes up

with a one-to-many ratio of commitment and entitlement. Your commitment to one

rule entitles you to move on in many different ways. This feature underlines once

more the game-like character of a technological grammar.

On the other hand, the difference between instructions and rules finally represents

the distinction between a behavioristic and a grammatical approach of learning. In

order to learn a language, it is not sufficient to reproduce the parental instructions

or to react in a one-to-one manner to external stimuli. To comprehend and to

20

produce sentences you have never heard before, an understanding of the involved

production rules is indispensable. Practice in terms of following instructions does

not explain this ability to produce and understand ever new sentences.

Similarly, practice does not explain the ability of users and developers to create and

use ever new technological artefacts. Therefore, we insist on the difference

between technological practice and technological literacy.

5 Acquaintance to technology

In recent years several sociological as well as philosophical diagnoses have drawn

the picture of a society profoundly transformed by and through technology.

At least against the background of a grammatical perspective on technology, the

strong preoccupation, if not obsession with technological objects in current

diagnoses and theories leaves the impression, as if a theoretical re-enchantment of

things would enable them to talk to us in a romanticist fashion and to explain us,

why they have become so indispensable and so cherished. In other words, the

fetish-like examination of technological objects as possible causes for our happy

living with them misses the point. More than subjects, objects are simply incapable

to tell us their ‘truth’.

In need of an explanation is not so much our appreciation of this very object, but

our fluency with a range of different technological objects. We are accustomed to

microwave ovens, to doors, to windows, to cell phones, to automatic teller

machines, to trains or cars. It is highly unlikely that even the most sociologically,

philosophically or anthropologically advanced case study of a microwave oven will

help us to understand, inasmuch this very special device stands for a range of other

technological artefacts we use in our everyday life.

Not before we realize that the microwave oven is part of a technological game or a

technological grammar, we able to understand that its handling is greatly facilitated

by a lot of other devices we have already become accustomed to.

Think of using a cell phone. By pressing the power button, a screen appears that

invites you to press more buttons such as the ones of a numeric keypad. Even

simpler is the power switch for indoor illumination: If you press the button, the

light goes on or off. Imagine furthermore the usage of a desktop computer or an

Kommentar [AK14]: Diskussionspunkt: Stimmt das so, in welchem Sinne muss ich die Regel verstehen?

Kommentar [AK15]: Nordmann: Hier überschneiden sich unsere beiden Ansätze, weswegen ich ja vom Werk spreche, indem sich ein Ding so oder so ausdrückt und das insofern eine Grammatik hat – während deine Grammatik eher an ein Skript im Sinne Latours erinnert, ein Bedienungsmuster oder Anleitung für die, die „Technik sprechen!geht es bei mir um die objektive Struktur eines Werks, egal ob sie, wie sie angeeignet wird.

21

automatic teller machine. In both cases the machine displays a particular behavior

depending on the button you pushed. By adding alarm clocks or microwaves to

your imagination, you will find yourself amidst a world full of conditionals. If you

press this or that button, then this or that will happen in a more or less expected

way.

Regardless of whether you just use or develop a computer program or a machine,

sooner or later you will be confronted with a conditional logic or grammar of

technology. Have you ever tried to write a computer program? Then you will have

noticed the almost endless number of if, then … else clauses like the ones in the

following program listing. There is no need to understand what the program does.14

It is only important to note the immense occurrence of IF, THEN and ELSE:

PROCEDURE Game_Won IF symbol in square 1=symbol in square 2=symbol in square 3 THEN declare winner; ELSE IF symbol in square 1=symbol in square 5=symbol in square 9 THEN declare winner;

ELSE IF symbol in square 1=symbol in square 4=symbol in square 7 THEN declare winner;

ELSE IF symbol in square 2=symbol in square 5=symbol in square 8 THEN declare winner; ELSE IF symbol in square 3=symbol in square 6=symbol in square 9 THEN declare winner; ELSE IF symbol in square 4=symbol in square 5=symbol in square 6 THEN declare winner; ELSE IF symbol in square 7=symbol in square 8=symbol in square 9 THEN declare winner; ELSE IF symbol in square 7=symbol in square 5=symbol in square 3 THEN declare winner; ELSE Declare no winner;

END Game_Won

Table 2: Pseudocode for checking a win situation of Tic, Tac, Toe (The win situation depicted in the graphic example is highlighted in the pseudo-code)

Now, think of cooking. Although the recipes in advanced cookbooks often

resemble computer algorithms, the cultural technology of cooking has hardly

anything in common with the fixed behavior patterns of an automatic teller

machine. On the contrary, cooking implies a high familiarity with the materiality of

the ingredients. How does flour for instance affect the viscosity of my spaghetti

sauce? The technological grammar of cooking thus has much more in common

with chemistry based sciences such as pharmacology. It is a grammar which

heavily relies on rules specifying which ingredients can be mixed and combined

with others.

14 It checks the conditions, whether someone has won the game Tic Tac Toe or not

22

The grammar of conditionals as well as the grammar of cooking represent just two

examples of synchronically coexisting orders of technology, each with its own set

of rules. Understanding these finite rules does not only help us to philosophically

come to terms with technology as grammars, but also with getting accustomed with

ever new technological artefacts, we comprehend on the basis of previous ones.

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