This book is about the functions of technical artefacts, material objects made to
serve practical purposes; objects ranging from tablets of Aspirin to Concorde,
from wooden clogs to nuclear submarines. More precisely, the book is about
using and designing artefacts, about what it means to ascribe functions to them,
and about the relations between using, designing and ascribing functions. In
the following pages, we present a detailed account that shows how strong these
relations are. Technical functions cannot be properly analysed without taking
into regard the beliefs and actions of human beings, we contend.