Do I have to choose just one?
Sherry Turkle's latest book, Evocative
Objects: Things We Think With, is a collection of stories about objects and
the ways they become part of our lives. At least one
review of the book quotes Turkle:
We think with the objects we love; we love the objects
we think with.
Though I most certainly identify with that thought,
as I reflect on it, I find myself scratching my head and wondering whether this
is supposed to be a new, a novel, observation.
It would seem to me that the vast majority of people with books on their bookshelves
don't keep them there so that they can perhaps sometime in the future take them
off the shelf to thumb through them and find some important information they need,
but because even a cursory scan of the titles on those shelves generates thoughts
and ideas and memories. Sometimes these thoughts are instrumental and help us to
achieve something, but more often than not they simply permit us a moment of reflection.
In her book, Turkle asked the people she interviewed to tell the story of one
object in their lives, and the collected stories are often fascinating and moving.
But I'm perhaps most fascinated with the ability of those interviewed to actually
single out one object to tell about. Only one? Among what must be shelves and
boxes of items, each of which has a story to tell, I think I'd "single out"
an entire (and full) box just so I wouldn't have to choose only one object.
Go to: The shoebox advantage.