The problem of modernity haunts the Western tradition of philosophy and moves us from disenchantment and disempowerment of the word to its re-enchantment. If critical reasoning exorcised the magic power of the word, technological achievements of control reinstated it. More straightforwardly, perhaps, Russian thought traditionally viewed the word as a “technical” or “magical” artifact capable of changing the world. In the beginning was God‘s word but are also the words which open the world of nanotechnology and the digital worlds of software engineering. It is shown how the contributions to this special issue probe various aspects of the word as a technical artefact with technical functions.