Prompt 3:
In a sense, literature. It’s not a natural resource in the way Heidegger conceives of a river, but in the context of life within an industrial society, it might as well be. All the myriad books within my home exist in a liminal state, full of knowledge and yet entirely without someone to view or actualize their contents. Only when I decide to pick one up and read it does it become useful to me as a resource, be it for learning something new or simply for entertainment. From the perspective of the person owning the book, it exists to be read, though you could make the argument it serves an aesthetic function too. Bookstores, or libraries, then, are reframed into information mines, like behemoth quarries of marble. The text will always be there, inked on the many pages of the inexhaustible quantities of books. Only once they’re opened and looked upon do their contents bear meaning in relation to the individual acting upon it.