Without a doubt, Wittgenstein’s work is still incredibly rich (as the ever-growing list of new interpretations and readings show) but as Figure 1 exemplifies the challenge at hand requires us to find very particular tiles with special connectors. These particular connections in Wittgenstein’s work are (1) his ideas about metaphors and (2) a technological interpretation of his well-known
language games. Specifically, I will discuss the central role that metaphors play in his work and consequently introduce
conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003) as a practical framework to analyse metaphors in our cognition. Mark Coeckelbergh’s (2017)
technology games will similarly serve as a framework to understand technology in Wittgensteinian terms and help to understand social, historical, and cultural challenges. After introducing the two connecting pieces of this puzzle, I will talk about the fourth tile on the table — Open Knowledge Maps (
openknowledgemaps.org), a visual knowledge discovery tool and academic search engine (Kraker et al, 2016). Finally, I will elaborate how both
conceptual metaphor theory and
technology games serve as connecting pieces between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and OKM.