ABSTRACT Inspired by researchers’ observations of the increased use of things in modern society, discussions about non-human actors, and the author Georges Perec’s interest in what happens when nothing seems to happen, this article explores how a collection of materials originally used for educating engineers can be used to study the history of everyday life. Changes in everyday life are investigated through the lens of three objects from the collection: a broken nail moulded in zinc during World War I; a piece of concrete from an experiment performed in 1980; and spectacle bows made of titanium. Through these objects, the article examines what twentieth-century history looks like when we take non-humans seriously in history writing and use such objects as starting points, inspiration, and sources. It also suggests the concepts of ‘non-things’ and ‘taken-for-granted things’ as a way of paying more attention to objects that are central to our daily life but usually go unnoticed. Using the history of concrete and titanium as cases, the article becomes a history of the many changeable materials that form the mostly unnoticed and seemingly stable background of everyday life. In affluent society, these materials have contributed to both predictability, comfort, and environmental problems.

中文翻译：

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眼镜架，断裂的钉子和混凝土样品-讲述变化历史的材料

摘要受研究人员对现代社会中越来越多的事物使用的观察，关于非人类演员的讨论以及作者乔治·佩雷克（Georges Perec）对似乎什么也没发生的情况的兴趣的启发，本文探讨了如何收集最初用于教育的材料的集合。工程师可以用来研究日常生活的历史。通过收集该系列中三个物体的镜头来研究日常生活的变化：第一次世界大战期间用锌铸成的断钉；1980年进行的一项实验的混凝土；和钛制成的眼镜弓。通过这些对象，本文研究了二十世纪的历史，当我们认真对待非人类的历史记录并将其作为起点，灵感和来源时，它们是什么样的。它还提出了“无物”和“准予处理的东西”的概念，作为一种更多关注日常生活中不可或缺的物体的方法。以混凝土和钛的历史为例，这篇文章成为了许多易变材料的历史，这些材料构成了日常生活中几乎没有被注意到且看似稳定的背景。在富裕的社会中，这些材料导致可预测性，舒适性和环境问题。