Technology and its design are fundamentally reshaping the role of language in our world. Digital, information, and communication technologies are driving this transformation and the web of our human relations is shaped by their design.

Technology and design are often, at least implicitly, understood as forms of language. From design languages to coding languages, from the grammar of ornament to programming syntax, we instinctively describe them with the same terminology. Layers of translation exist between the hardware and us: raw materials are converted to binary signals, compiled into programs, and expressed through interfaces – graphical or otherwise. With the rise of ubiquitous Large Language Models (LLMs), the question concerning technology and the question concerning language are ever more intertwined on the experiential level. This expansion of the domain of language, narrowly defined, demands closer examination.

This project begins with Hannah Arendt’s understanding that our shared world is built upon and sustained by unmediated speech between humans. Accepting language’s crucial role in politics, extending far beyond mere rhetoric, as a constituting element of our human world, should then compel us to consider technology’s place within it. Yet, Arendt also cautioned that technology could erode the meaningfulness of speech, disconnecting us from our shared world.

What then is the essence of language and of speech – that which collectively constructs and safeguards our shared world? Are there qualitative differences between this human language and the language of technology and its design. If so, what are they? Are we extending our web of relationships beyond humans, encompassing the materials of our earth, or is our connection to both fundamentally disrupted?

Exploring these questions aims to illuminate the complex interplay of politics, language, technology, and design. Does technology fundamentally threaten our worldliness, or does it enhance it? Under which conditions specifically might one or the other be true?