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The analogy between sign and tool is an old one, and the general notion of cognitive technologies now has widespread application throughout the cognitive sciences. There has been little attempt, however, to create a more fine-tuned categorization of different kinds of cognitive technology, or to analyze its specific semiotic character. Although we have the early categorization by Bruner of technologies into those that amplify motor actions, those that amplify perception and those that amplify thought, this only yields the third, undifferentiated category of cognitive technologies, without fully explaining it.

All human artefacts are in a broad sense cognitive, inasmuch as they embody human intentionality. However, there is a special subclass of what we can call cognitive artefacts: this subclass can loosely be defined as comprising those artefacts that support symbolic and conceptual processes in abstract conceptual domains. Examples of cognitive artefacts are notational systems (including writing and number), dials, calendars and compasses. Cultural and cognitive schemas organizing at least some relevant conceptual domains may be considered, I shall argue, as dependent upon, and not merely expressed by, the employment of cognitive artefacts.

I propose, then, to view cognitive technology as being instantiated in cognitive artefacts. This means that to count as a cognitive technology, an item must be part of the made, rather than the found, world. Thus, first-order tools (such as sticks used in termite-fishing) are excluded, but artefacts that are made by the spatial placement of found elements (eg stones marking direction) may qualify as cognitive artefacts. Second, I propose that to qualify as a cognitive artefact, the artefact must have a representational function: that is, it is an intentionally produced sign, or incorporates such signs in its structure. All artefacts, I argue, have a signifying status, inasmuch as they functionally “count as” instances of the artefact class of which they are a member, to use Searle’s expression, and their material form signifies that status function. However, to be a cognitive artefact, the artefact must also represent something outside itself, through a sign function materially embedded in the artefact. By applying this criterion, we may stipulate that a telephone or telegraph is not a cognitive artefact (so not a cognitive technology); but a Morse code beeper, or a teletype, or an alphanumeric screen display connected to the wire are all cognitive artefacts, because they inherit the cognitive artefactuality of the writing system.

In general, all cognitive artefacts involve some kind of notational system. The status of cognitive artefact may be simply inherited, as we saw in the examples above, from the notational system itself. However, new modes of organization of the notational system, and of the processes operating on and through the notational system, may also be characteristic of cognitive artefacts. The abacus is therefore a cognitive artefact, and so is the spreadsheet. On my current definition, however, a desktop computer is not itself a cognitive artefact; rather, it permits the development and use of functionally specialised cognitive artefacts.

We might also ask whether Searle’s distinction between regulative and constitutive rules or norms also has a parallel in the typology of cognitive artefacts. I think that it does. Some cognitive artefacts are best thought of as augmentative. Books, for example, are clearly cognitive artefacts, but they support and augment the possibilities of reading and authoring that are afforded by writing systems. Similarly, compasses enable us better to navigate in a system of co-ordinates projected onto the world that predated the compass itself. In contrast with the class of augmentative cognitive artefacts there is another class of constitutive cognitive artefacts, that literally bring into being the domain with respect to which they facilitate cognitive operations. Examples, I suggest, are number systems, clocks and calendars. Such constitutive cognitive artefacts can have radically transformative effects on cognition, as I shall illustrate in relation to some of our field work.

Finally, I shall consider whether or not human natural language can be viewed as a cognitive technology. On the one hand natural languages can be considered as artefactual vehicles with cognition-transforming properties; on the other hand human evolutionary adaptation to language, and cognitively motivated language evolution, have yielded a symbiotic relationship between species and biocultural niche that is analogous with non-human species/niche relationships.  The human artefact-niche of language is neither just biology nor just invention; it is part of our human species being, and it is crucial to what makes us human.