Making Up Significant Objects for Fun and Profit
On the Significant Objects website, objects purchased for a few dollars at a garage sale are transformed into “significant objects” via fictionalized accounts (stories) and then sold on e-bay. According to the site, care is taken not to hoax anybody on e-bay but to test a hypothesis:
“A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to our hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay!”
From a cognitive design perspective, the story is enhancing the “think and feel” layer of the artifact remaking it into a significant object with increased market value. Is it working? The site is actually a catalog of objects, their stories, purchase price and selling prices. For example,
