Using manufactured objects places the user in the presence of others

Evidence

In his first example, Sartre asks us to imagine walking in a park. If I’m alone, the park arranges itself comfortably around my point of view: everything I see presents itself to me. But then I notice a man crossing the lawn towards me. This causes a sudden cosmic shift. I become conscious that the man is also arranging his own universe around himself. As Sartre puts it, the green of the grass turns itself towards the other man as well as towards me, and some of my universe drains off in his direction. Some of me drains off too, for I am an object in his world as he is in mine. I am no longer a pure perceiving nothingness; I have a visible outside, which I know he can see. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 676 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Encountering another person makes one an object in their world — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 676; Manufactured objects channel the user’s possible movements toward ends built into their design.; Manufactured objects encode impersonal directives that strip users of individuality — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 504 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Encountering another person makes one an object in their world #expands (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 676