A collected object is abstracted from its use, and becomes a thing that is possessed. The object’s materiality is less important than its function, as such it is equivalent to all other objects of its kind. A practical object like a utensil or a refrigerator is put to use in some fashion. On collecting: The purpose of objects is to be put to use or to be possessed. They probably are equated with entertainment like TV and film? Consider games as Objects of Products? (p. What about games? Play has no function, save pure indulgence. Software aspires to functionalism like physical objects do (Consider Norman, DoET and Emotional Design).
59) An interesting tangent: Considering functionalism and software or games. Specifically, Baudrillard is talking about tail fins in cars, which serve no practical purpose whatsoever, but their form evokes idealized fastness. This is allegorical form, which does no more than to signify the idea of the function. But… the sign is the function: it evokes an imaginary ideal function, beyond the limited real one. On form and function in objects: In some cases, form is totally functionless, but rather, it operates as a sign.
Consider the psychological or sociological relation to objects, namely referencing George Mead, wherein objects are things that have been enacted. Software takes this to a natural extreme. Production yields equivalence of objects. The technology is bound and inextricable from the object, making it a concrete unit. Modern objects are rooted in their technology, the technological qualities of objects are essential, whereas in the psychological and sociological sphere, the things that happen to the object are inessential. The system of objects is a system of meanings.
Some of the original ideas were relating object dependence to works like The Sims. Baudrillard looks at advertising, functionality, collection: the various social constructs that have evolved around objects which have come to represent much more than mere utility. He weaves Freudian and Saussurian (semiotic and psychological) analysis into a Marxist explanation of the commodity in society.
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