Introduction
Recent events around Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have once again led to a surge of popular pieces in the media that emphasize the importance of the humanities and especially philosophy for a healthy society. But how do we, as philosophers and researchers, actually make the transition out of the philosopher’s armchair into an impactful position at the cutting edge of technology next to creators, builders, and engineers? A big question indeed, that I want to explore in this paper, by focussing on two particular cases. In this essay, I am investigating how Ludwig Wittgenstein’s legacy might be interpreted and used as a practical framework to not only understand but also build and create technology. In his book The Social Construction of What? Ian Hacking tries to avoid discussing what he calls “elevator words” — semantically vague words such as “truth”, “fact”, or “reality”. In a similar vein, I am hoping to make a tiny step out of my armchair by replacing the elevator word of technology with a concrete piece of software and connecting it to the concrete philosophical ideas that I am introducing. Wittgenstein and OKM are two tiles of different jigsaw puzzles, namely those called “theory” and “practice” and in this explorative piece, I am hoping to present two additional theories that I believe to be interlocking pieces which enable us to assemble the resulting puzzle merging both theory and practice.