The Meaning Of Things Essay

In the book, The Meaning of Things, the authors say in the preface “The study that follows is an attempt to understand how and why people in contemporary urbanized America relate to things in their immediate environment. We wanted to examine the role of objects in people 's definition of who they are, of who they have been, and who they wish to become” (pg. x) Objects are what make us human, we create them and in return they teach us about ourselves, the world and they give us goals. The authors of The Meaning of Things explain to us how humans interact with items and why we interact with items. The authors in the text study families to see how they value their household objects and why. Humans need goals, goals are what drive the human

In the first part of attempting to understand why urbanized Americans relate to things they asked “What are the things in your home which are special to you” (pg. 56). The authors would also follow up as to why that object was special to them. What the authors saw was that the category of furniture had different value to each group of the family. For the younger generation it served as a “momentary purpose” (pg.60) for comfort and enjoyment. The younger generation don’t invest psychic energy into furniture hence why the authors say it serves as a “momentary purpose”, they use it for the moment but do not use it to cultivate anything. The middle generation or the parents the value was the representation of “memories, relationships and past experiences” (pg.61). As for the grandparents, furniture holds similar values to the parents such as signs of past events, ties to family and other people. The older generation here cultivate memories and past experiences of the world with furniture which also helps explain why the younger generation don’t necessarily care for furniture yet. The younger generation cannot cultivate experiences of the world or use the furniture to process information like the two older