People assign meanings to objects - nothing new about that. But now the objects are starting to act as links to those meanings. In a report titled "Creative Industries: from properties to relationships" Rob van Kranenburg claims:
(...) we have moved from an economy of properties to an economy of relationships. Any object that is standalone nowadays, is simply not visible. It is not the individual properties of an object that have value, no, it is the kind and quality of the relationships that it has with other objects that determines its value.
But the value of an object is not determined just by its relationship to other objects. I can think of at least four other types of relationships through which we see value (or the lack of value) in objects.
First, we value products in relation to their function: what they do and how useful they are.
Second, we value products in relation to their source: who has designed or manufactured the product and what they stand for. This forms the basis of branding. It also includes questions such as where the product is manufactured and what kinds of materials it is made of.
Third, we value products in relation to the era that they represent. The 80s have been back in style for a while, causing a renaissance of mullets and loop earrings. Likewise, even a year's difference in the date of manufacture can mean worlds to an old car ethusiast or an antique connaisseur.
Fourth, we value products in relation to personal stories. These are increasingly available on blogs, discussion forums and online stores (e.g. book reviews on Amazon).
However, the objects themselves have not served as links to these meanings. Now that is changing. To quote Russell Buckley’s paper from the Wikimania05 conference:
(...) it’s conceivable that we would have a swathe of digital graffiti to enrich our environment. It would be both non-polluting and not even visible. (…)This is Web 3.0, where physical world hyperlinks connect us to the digital world, to the benefit of all.
A swathe of new services are already enabling people to link to objects. They include recommendation systems like last.fm for music. There are also services for annotating physical objects (e.g. Microsoft's Aura) and places (e.g. Plazes and Tagzania). These services are not 'only' social software. In the economy of relations they are the new centers of value creation.
Comments