For the love of stuff

Some of the most pictured Burning House objects are laptops and smartphones, and replaceability is one factor that distinguishes them. Many of the other things people named as their favorites in Afshar’s study—jewelry, instruments, art—had been with them for years and were perhaps valuable in part because they were old. But while people were attached to their connected devices, they were also pretty willing to trade them in for newer models, or replace them if they got lost.

People get attached to their computers and phones because of what they can do, not because of what they are. “In these types of objects, there’s a physical part that we need because we are physical beings. And then the virtual or nonphysical part,” Afshar says. It’s the nonphysical things that would be distressing to lose—photos or music saved on the hard drive, or, even more nebulously, access to the Internet and all of its communication potential. These things are enabled by the object, but have little to do with what it physically is. “Objects of our time are not stand-alone objects anymore,” Afshar writes, meaning the nature of people’s attachment to some of their most important possessions is even blurrier.

Perhaps, though, this is just a new manifestation of something people have always valued about their objects—a representation of human connection. This is a thread Huntington has noticed throughout the submissions he’s received. “[They’re] mainly objects that people use for communicating and expressing their voice to the world. Like letters, laptops, cameras, musical instruments. Things people use to be heard with, like a cell phone. The older generation, they had letters, books, and newspaper clippings, stuff like that…that’s the way they communicated.”