Understanding {IT} Artefacts with Language

Every day we experience relationships with artefacts, which describe material objects made by humans in order to reach a goal and exploit the human feature to plan ahead. Artefacts bring together cognitive evolution and technical enhancement. Although artefacts are conceived as technical, we are now facing a relationship with Information Technology (IT) artefacts. IT artefacts include both hardware and software, as a two-sided entity. The definition of IT artefact corresponds with the Saussurean linguistic sign: a two-sided entity constituted by the signifier (hardware) and the signified (software). I claim that IT artefacts share this ontological trait with the linguistic sign. I will show that IT artefacts are the result of design and planning, while language—which is an institution—is not the fabrication of one human but linked to collective human activity