Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us documents the things that would take place if humans were to suddenly vanish from earth.
Bogost makes it clear that he doesn’t want to exclude humans completely from the OOO scope as humans are part of the everything that is included in the term “objects.” He only seeks to decentralize the human as the basis for all existence.
“If we take seriously the idea that all objects recede interminably into themselves, then human perception becomes just one among many ways that objects might relate.” (9)
What’s it like to be a thing? Bogost purports one might use science studies to answer this question, but even this will inevitably fall short as a human agent remains at the center of analysis. Fields that fail to accurately measure up to the task of defining what it feels like for an object: • Vitalism - projects a living nature onto all things • Panpsychism - the mind is a universal feature of every object’s existence • Panexperientialism - the view that all matter has consciousness
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