weekly Go Flip Yourself

Coming into communion with an object means forming a relationship together.

Rolf Haubl, sociologist and psychoanalyst, insists that the role of objects is to carry memories. The real meaning of the thing then is within its mnemonic value. In a way, the chair becomes a sort of transformational object, gaining more significance after the passing of its owner. Granny Puckett’s essence and memory have been absorbed into it, especially for those left in her wake, who recognize the chair as an experience of remembrance.

We depend on the chair to bring back memories of Granny Puckett. Those who knew or heard stories of her experience the chair in different ways that deepen our connection to her. These stories create a history around the object, signifying the biography of the object itself, which “is no longer simply a dead or inanimate thing,” as Clive Dilnot proposes. “It possesses—or we attribute to it in our imaginations—sentience and power.”

By their nature, heirlooms tend to carry extra significance. The chair as a family heirloom is now a device that conjures memory and connection across time.

The biography of an object should not be restricted to an historical reconstruction of its birth, life and death. Biography is relational and an object biography is comprised of the sum of the relationships that constitute it.

So for 21 weeks this year I homeschooled my boy. Every day I felt scared and overwhelmed and excited and liberated. And the results have been beyond anything I believed possible.

• Internet ate the world; then broke; then some people rallied to fix it; then… we’re lost — disoriented

• what do we collectively even desire?

• at first, you just want to hang out and have fun; then you grow up and have less time for the group chat

• saying you want to change something, and actually changing it are two different jobs

• the New Internet needs a more honest relationship to money

• Are.na is deserving of its unofficial title as golden child of the New Internet

If we want to revitalize our neighborhood communities, we should ask: which factors explain why so many have declined in the face of technological change? I see four: changes in the physical landscape, decline in local institutions, individualization of religion, and shifts in our education and aspirations. Where these four factors have changed the least, community remains the strongest.

This is a story about three dates: 1994, 2007, and 2022. And then three more dates: 1996, 2009 and 2025.