ABSTRACT
A number of writers propose that we are currently experiencing not only an increase in the number of objects, but also a transformation in what an object is. Objects today, it is said, are incomplete, in the sense both of continually appearing in new versions, and also of being open or requiring participation by subjects to be completed. The sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina (1997, 2000) proposes that objects are no longer fixed, discrete things of a material nature but the obverse of this insofar as they are characterized by a changing, unfolding character. Sony, for instance, manufactured over 700 versions of the Walkman, aspirin is available in multiple formats, and mobile phones and computers are always being updated. As Knorr Cetina puts it, objects now lack objectivity: they are not fixed or static but are constantly in a condition of transition and transformation. She also argues that objects increasingly make relational demands on us; indeed, she suggests that non-human or object-based sociality pervades some of the important sites of power in contemporary society (for example, the stock exchange and government) as well as saturating mundane practices. She describes the relationality between subjects and objects in terms of an ongoing affinity between subjects conceived as structures of wanting and objects that are unfolding things. Similarly, the science fiction writer and cultural critic Bruce Sterling (2005) suggests that objects today can be understood as what he calls spime; that is, they are ‘a set of relationships first and always, and an object now and then’ (2005: 77). Spime are data in computational environments, which are designed, accessed, managed and recycled into objects. The important questions, he says, are ‘not about the material object, but where it comes from, where it is, how long it stays there, when it goes away, and what comes next’ (2005: 109). Like Knorr Cetina, he emphasizes the increasing significance of relating to objects: ‘I don’t worry much about having things. I worry plenty about relating to them’ (2005: 79).
