"The Restless of Objects" is about logistics and everyday life. It aims to better understand what logistics is, the ways it is imagined, the spaces it creates, the technologies it deploys, and the ways it connects to our own habits and desires. It is written in an accessible scholarly manner that tries to make space for the fascinating and humorous aspects of the subject matter.

The piece was commissioned for an issue of Cabinet dedicated to logistics and published in November 2012 in Brooklyn, NY. Cabinet is an arts and culture quarterly distributed internationally in 11,000 copy runs to an audience sympathetic with the publication's stated ambitions: "Cabinet aims to foster curiosity about the world we have made and inhabit. We believe that curiosity is the very basis of ethics insofar as a deeper understanding of our social and material cultures encourages us both to be better custodians of the world and at the same time allows us to imagine it otherwise."

By examining the way logistics is presented commercially and by comparing it to both its historic sources and contemporary technical and spatial manifestations, I hope to illuminate an increasingly significant aspect of contemporary life. By further connecting the the massive technological apparatus of logistics to mundane aspects of our own desires, I would be glad if the text also prompted readers to reflect on their own practices and sources of fulfillment.

This piece is part of a larger research project on the architecture, urbanism, and subjectivity of logistics. I gather evidence from primary sources actively involved with the shaping of the logistics industry from both popular and technical realms. This archive includes, for example, UPS television advertisements, logistics trade journals, patent applications, and materials handling manuals. By looking at elements in the collection carefully, my hope is to better understand the outlooks and ambitions of their creators, whether implicit or declared. The resulting text is a combination of criticism and scholarship that draws from fields like architectural history, cultural studies, urban geography, business history, and science, technology, and society studies.

I hope the piece is fun and surprising to read. If it incites curiosity in its readers or gives them cause to reflect on broader related issues, even better!