The paper is a critical review of Levi R.Bryant’s books Onto-Cartography:An Ontology of Machines and Media(2014) and The Democracy of Objects(2011) from the perspective of semiotics.It contrasts Charles S.Peirce’s notions of semiosis and the agency of the sign with Bryant’s speculative realism,according to which the universe of things as well as the biosphere of living beings are universes of machines.It also draws parallels between Saussure’s 1916 postulate of semiology as a new science of the meaning of cultural objects and Bryant’s postulate of a new science of the universe of things under the name of mechanology.