thoughts on «Artifacts»

According to this reading, artifacts are “man-made object that reflects history”.
The part I found the most interesting was the discussion of the “art of making things”.
It was left up to heavy interpretation, but something that was implicitly addressed was the importance of making “intelligent, goal-directed actions”.
A word I’ve never heard before is ‘naturefacts’. Naturefacts, once “modified to improve its usability for a purpose”, become artifacts.
Another interesting part of the text is how independent vs dependent objects are classified as existing with or without their substrate. This really widened my understanding of what an artifact could be.
I appreciate the idea that artifacts, both physically and functionally evolve over time.
Also, an artifact’s dependence on the author’s intentions brings up factors of morality. It is often easy to parse a designer’s values from the work they create. In most cases the work reflects the intentions of the designer’s process as a whole rather than the final product exclusively.
“The success of an author’s productive activity depends on the degree of fit or agreement between the intended and the actual character of the object.”