Social Artifacts Essay

Introduction Throughout time, human beings have gathered, connected and utilized objects for themselves in one way or another to better their lives. These objects are usually collected over a long period of time and stored in museums to remind the community of historical or artistic significance. In the United States, every museum has artifacts that naturally lend themselves to social experiences in the community. It might be a slave whip that triggers museum visitors to share their memories of their grandparent’s experience during the African American slave trade, or a dinosaur’s skeleton that makes people speculate on how the current world would have been with them in it. It could be a piece of art with a mystery that visitors point to one another in amusement, or a compelling historical image, such as the United States dropping the atomic bomb in Hiroshima that makes people discuss its destructiveness. These experiences and artifacts are all objects that are considered social. It can be said that social objects are the fundamental engines of socially network experiences in the community, around which conversation takes

As mentioned above, the social objects or artifacts are usually collected in museums. However, individuals also collect different objects that create meaning to their individual and community lives. These objects can be collected and stored in what is known as collectables. The collected objects seem to be seen as a way to bring order to an order less world in order to bring meaning to the past, present and the future, which is the reason museums, collect historical objects. For instance, dolls as objects teach non-native Americans about the Indian culture. Unlike the museum, I have collected objects in a Wonder Box shown below that have significant meaning in my personal and community