thingpeople

Thingpeople is a contemporary term used in speculative fiction and philosophy to describe individuals whose sense of self and social identity is inseparable from a curated set of objects. Artifacts such as tools, devices, heirlooms, and sensors function not merely as aids but as integral components of mind, body, and social practice. The objects may be physically attached or distributed across the environment through wearable or implanted interfaces, creating a blended person-object agency.

Origin and etymology: The word is a neologism formed from thing and people, intended to highlight material enmeshment. It emerged in late-20th and early-21st century speculative literature and critical theory discussions of distributed cognition and posthumanism.

In fiction and theory: Thingpeople are often depicted in near-future or science fiction settings where communities organize around artifact stewardship, sensor networks, and shared interfaces. Narratives explore reciprocal obligations between person and object, object rights, and questions of autonomy when devices participate in decision making.

Practices and experience: Identity is distributed; memory and reasoning may be augmented by external repositories and interfaces. Social roles emphasize maintenance, curation, and trust in artifact networks. Legal and ethical frameworks are imagined to grant rights to individuals and to certain objects, or to redefine personhood.

Reception and critique: Thingpeople readings illuminate debates in distributed cognition, posthumanism, and object-oriented ontology, while sparking concerns about dependency on technology, inequality in access to artifact networks, and risks of surveillance or manipulation.