Rubbish Theory

Someone made a posting to the XMCA mailing list about a recent Engestrom & Blackler article (March 2005) titled On the Life of the Object. Since an object carries the motive in an activity system, I thought it would be a good idea to do some extra reading on objects so I started with this one. In it, the authors extend the work, Rubbish Theory, by Michael Thompson (1979) to discuss what happens to an object once it is produced. The central focus of interest - at least for me - is that an object can be designated as "durable" (having value) or rubbish and that objects can change states in a variety of ways.

What does this mean for portfolios? When reading about paper portfolios, I see discussions of portfolios abandoned in professors' offices. Since the portfolio authors didn't consider them worth retrieving, I will assume they considered their portfolios rubbish. Some recycled the portfolios into examples for other students - a rescue from the rubbish bin. Others probably recycled portions (the binder or tabbed dividers) converting the rubbish back into resources to be used again for something else. Digital portfolios leave a much less visible form of clutter than their paper cousins, but I've certainly stumbled across abandoned electronic portfolios on the Internet. I wonder what, if anything, my participants will have to say about "rubbish" or "durables" with respect to their digital portfolios.