Walk into someoneâs home, and youâll find their personal bookshelf. What books? All sorts. Books lent by friends, gifted over the course of a certain chapter of life, ordered off Amazon after being referenced in conversation, picked up spontaneously in the airport duty-free before flights, bought solely for the aesthetic value of their coversâŚ
In this piece, weâll be using books as a metaphor for ownable cultural artifacts. Letâs get into it.
My amazing friend Inga Chen wrote:
âWhat books people buy are stronger signals of what topics are important to people, or perhaps what topics are aspirationally important, important enough to buy a book on it that will take hours to readâ....or that theyâll display on their shelf to signal something about themselves.
As I look at the books Iâve accumulated, Iâm reminded of how Iâve changed. How my bookshelf changes is quiet, but powerful commentary on whatâs happening in my life. A few months ago, I bought a bunch of baking booksâlike many people, I had a baking phase during covid. Recently, Iâve been really into product design and am amassing a bunch of the canonical books on the topic. In many ways, the bookshelf is an archive of who I amâand who I want to be.
Beyond the selection of books, the way I organize my books is opinionated. I chose to showcase Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan, but hide Principles by Ray Dalio. I also spent a couple of hours organizing my books based on their color, and every time I add one, I slot into the right place. I care a lot about the aesthetic of my bookshelf, because itâs quite visible - it stands center stage in my living room.
When we visit bookstores, we go in with an intention. Sometimes itâs to search for a specific book, to seek inspiration for our next read or maybe we just want to be in the bookstore for the vibes - the aesthetic or what being in that space signals to ourselves or others. When I visit someoneâs house, Iâll always look at whatâs on their bookshelf to see what theyâre reading. This is especially the case for someone I admire or want to get to know better.Â
Scanning the bookshelf, Iâm on the lookout for a spontaneous discovery. The connection I have with the bookshelf owner provides some level of context and the trust that itâs somewhat a vetted recommendation. I look through the books for a title that catches my eye - maybe Iâll leaf through the pages and sample a few sentences, read the book jacket or the author biography. If something hits, maybe Iâll ask to borrow it or take a note to buy it later.Â
Thereâs something surprisingly intimate about browsing someoneâs bookshelf - a public display of what theyâre consuming, or looking to consume. When Iâm browsing someoneâs bookshelf, Iâm also on the lookout for books that Iâve read or books that fit my âtasteâ - and when I find something, it immediately creates common ground, triggers a sense of belonging and connection. It might be even more reason for me to opt to dig deeper into their bookshelf to see what else theyâre reading.
Along with discovery, the act of borrowing a book in itself creates a new context through which we can connect. Recommending a book to a friend is one thing, but sharing a copy of a book in which youâve annotated texts that stand out to you, highlighted key parts of paragraphsâthatâs an entirely new dimension for connection.Â
Last summer, after falling in love with Sally Rooneyâs Conversations with Friends, I mailed my annotated copy to another friend, who then mailed it to another. With each iteration of reads, we kept store of the parts that meant something to us through different colored pens and highlighters, claiming separate parts of the book as our own. It was an intellectual version of the sisterhood of the traveling pants. The copy became a shared collectible that we could use to archive our thoughts, feelings, and emotions, bringing us closer together in our friendship with a new understanding of how we connect with each other, and the messages that resonate with us.
People connect with people, not just content.Â
Whatâs more powerful than the books and the topics they discuss is the author. The effort to source the book, its edition, how early you got it, whether itâs signed by the author, the condition itâs in all serve as some âproof of workâ that signal to myself, and the world, the intensity of my fanship. And in all of this, putting out a carrier signal of varying intensity to other fans.Â
Take this metaphor of a bookshelf, and apply it to any other space that houses cultural artifacts â or what **Julian Weisser **has been calling Social Objects. Beyond the books we own, the shirts we wear, the posters we put on the walls of our bedrooms, the souvenirs we pick up â these are all social objects. They showcase what we care about and the communities to which we belong. At their core, social objects have always acted as a shorthand to tell people about who we are, functioning as beacons sending out a signal for like-minded people to find us. On the internet, social objects come in the form of URLs of JPGs, articles, songs, videos.
Pinterest, Goodreads, Spotify and the countless other platforms center discovery and community around creative works - but whatâs missing from our digital experience is this aspect of ownership thatâs rooted in physicality. We turn to digital platforms as sources of discovery and inspiration, but until now, we havenât been able to attach our identities to the content we consume. Without public histories that allow for âproof of fanshipâ, thereâs no way to track provenance or to verify that you were first to that song, to that artist, to that feeling, commentary, meme. And without true portability, we leave fragments of our digital identity across siloed spaces.Â
As we enter this new era, weâll see a natural evolution of platforms competing for our time: the battle for digital identity - an abstraction of the time we spend online. As more of our lives play out online, weâre spending increasing amounts of time and money developing our digital identities. With that, weâll see platforms compete less for share of our time online, but more for share of our digital identity.
Platforms that become the de facto âbookshelfâ for our online lives, where our social objects are placed and are on display, have a huge opportunity in front of them.
koodos has entered the chat.Â
By Jad Esber & Aleena Vigoda