It is over a decade that artefacts have been receiving more attention from philosophers. This attention has particularly been on the functional and normative aspects of artefacts and artefact use. Here I want to challenge the relevance of artefacts to functional and normative discussions and argue that this attention is misplaced and is misleading.  Instead, in these discussions, we need to focus on technological objects. This can be shown by answering a couple of questions: (1) Are artefacts the same as technological objects? And if the answer is no, (2) which category of objects should we be concerned with for functional and normative purposes: artefacts or technological objects? And why?

I first clarify what types of entities artefacts and technological objects are. Then I demonstrate why artefacts are not the same as technological objects on the one hand, and why even the metaphysical approach based on which the artefact/non-artefact distinction is made is different from the metaphysical approach based on which the technological/non-technological distinction is made on the other. While defending the relevance of the distinction between technological and non-technological objects, I argue that the distinction between artefacts and non-artefacts is functionally and normatively irrelevant and would even contribute to irrational behaviour and decision-making. Finally, I show that the misplaced attention on artefacts should not be resolved in a linguistic way simply by changing the definition of the term ‘artefact’.