The tangible within the virtual.
Undoubtedly, I've admitted to being an accumulator (rather than a collector) more
times than is actually called for. I
devoted three years to demonstrating (as though such a demonstration was actually
called for) that for me accumulating is a basic aspect of life, a means by which
I understand the world. My baseball card collection was never something that I
was particularly attached to, and today I have no idea where it might be. If,
however, I did still have it, I suppose that rifling through those cards would
certainly bring back memories. Even today I can picture some of those cards in
my mind, and in that way remember various aspects of my childhood. I admit that
I was surprised
to learn a few years back that there are collectors of baseball cards who
own large collections but who've never even seen their cards, or held them in
their hands. Collecting cards solely for profit is, of course, common, but that
seems to me to be taking things to quite an extreme.
Recently, however, a
New York Times article informed us that even in Second Life people apparently
need things in order to establish their identities. It seems that objects
don't have to be three-dimensional, or tangible, in order for us to accumulate
them. But of course the question then becomes whether the digital objects that
Second Lifers accumulate absorb and represent memories in the same way that three-dimensional
objects do in our physical lives.
Go to: The shoebox advantage.