Will our particular usage of the phrase “significant object” outlive the SO project? Might people browsing thrift stores, yard sales, and flea markets in the future pick up certain items and muse, “Hmmm… looks like a significant object.” And if so, what qualities or attributes might make an object — without a narrative — seem ripe for significating? Do all of the objects we’ve curated for the SO project share these qualities, whatever they may be?
Such questions suggest themselves, this morning, because of a post over at SO contributor Sara Ryan’s blog, in which she suggests that a coin purse she found at a thrift store “looks so much like a Significant Object.”
Readers, what do you think?
Joshua Glenn is an editor, publisher, and a freelance writer and semiologist. He does business as KING MIXER, LLC.
He's cofounder of the websites
HiLobrow,
Significant Objects, and
Semionaut; and cofounder of
HiLoBooks, which will reissue six Radium Age sci fi novels in 2012. In 2011, he produced and co-designed the
iPhone app KER-PUNCH. He's coauthored and co-edited
Taking Things Seriously,
The Idler's Glossary,
The Wage Slave's Glossary, the story collection
Significant Objects (forthcoming from Fantagraphics), and Unbored, a kids' field guide to life forthcoming from Bloomsbury.
In the '00s, Glenn was an associate editor and columnist at the
Boston Globe's IDEAS section; he also started the IDEAS blog
Brainiac. He has written for
Slate,
n+1,
Cabinet,
io9,
The Baffler,
Feed, and
The Idler.
In the '90s, Glenn published the seminal intellectual zine
Hermenaut; served as editorial director and co-producer of the pioneering DIY and online social networking website Tripod.com; and was an editor at the magazine
Utne Reader.
Glenn manages the
Hermenautic Circle, a secretive online community. He was born and raised in Boston, where he lives with his wife and sons.
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