An idea

I heard the other day that 95% of the things in a typical home have come by sea on a container ship. Actually, in my case, at one time, is was all of the things. When I moved my family to the UK 8 years ago, a quarter-container worth of things was shipped across the ocean. All of our possessions in an 8 x 8.6 x 10 foot block! Doesn't sound like much. I think we could fill the whole container now. Possessions multiply.

Anyway, I've been wondering about all these artifacts - man-made things - that fill my home and my life. They're all things that I wanted at one time. Most are functional, many beautiful, some fun, a few useless, and the odd one indispensable. But they all somehow got into my life. How did they do this? And the ones I don't care for anymore? They're still here too. Why is it so difficult to part with things? Maybe it's not so hard. There are two kinds of people: packrats and ebay addicts. In both cases, the things live on.

Artifacts have a hold on me. They resist disposal. Of course, the strange thing is that I could get by without most of them, but who wants to (in the First World)? I mean, if pressed, I could play "desert island artifacts", but let's leave that for another post.

Artifacts seem to have a hold on everybody. Artifacts are like insects: they've been successfully surviving in almost every environment on the earth, which has humans of course, and they are very plentiful. Could the total mass of artifacts be greater than the total mass of insects? They've been more successful in the First World than in the Third World, but everybody has artifacts.

Man changes artifacts. But is man really in control of the process, or are we merely part of the blind reproductive mechanism of artifacts. If you didn't know that a human designer was involved, could you think that artifacts evolved through mutation and natural selection similar to biological organisms?

Artifacts change man. They enable the human population to increase, which raises the demand for more artifacts. So, they fuel, and perhaps even create, consumerism and globalization.

Back to my home. The cargo container ship made we realize my fascination with how artifacts are made, and how they affect our lives. The idea of this blog is to do a bit of amateur neo-archaeology (an oxymoron?) on the artifacts I know best - the ones in my home. I want to explore how everyday household things have evolved over time, mutated, selected for the changing environment, and reproduced. So, I intend to go through all the artifacts in my home one at a time. Will a coherent picture emerge? I don't know, but at least I'll be able to work out how much cash I would make on ebay, and then move to a desert island.

Next entry: the rules of the game.

Links: The 20-Ton Packet, Wired 7.10