Klaus Krippendorff, Ph.D., the Gregory Bateson Professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture, presented the key note address to a July 9-13, conference in Asilomar, California, jointly organized by the American Society for Cybernetics and the Bateson Idea Group. The theme of this conference was “An Ecology of Ideas.” In his address he argued that ideas become manifest only in articulations and actions and that one might well avoid mentalist conceptions and talk instead of their manifestation in language. So, his talk was titled “An Ecology of Artifacts (or Pattern in) Language.” It combined his writings on the design of artifacts and the content analysis of large bodies of text, big data, showing how words, narratives, and theories affect each other, compete or form larger co-operations, in effect forming an ecology that is carried by a history of conversations and writings.