A New World of Things: Reimagining How We See, Value, and Live With the Things That Shape Our Homes

I. Introduction

We live in a world shaped by things. They surround us, support us, express us. They reflect our histories, tastes, identities, and ambitions. And yet, for all their importance, the systems we use to understand, acquire, and care for things remain profoundly limited. They are fragmented across platforms, obscured by algorithms, and constrained by a logic of consumption that too often treats objects as disposable, interchangeable, or merely fashionable. What we lack is not more access to things—but a better way to relate to them.

A New World of Things is a meditation on what becomes possible when we begin to see our material world clearly, and when we are given the tools to make it meaningful. It proposes that the Large World Model (LWM) for Domestic Life can unlock a new layer of structure and intelligence—allowing us to better understand what we have, what we want, and how those things relate to the spaces we live in and the lives we lead.

Beyond a technical upgrade to how we shop, we propose rethinking how we build, sustain, and inhabit our homes—object by object, plan by plan, moment by moment. The LWM enables us to move from generalized style categories to individualized aesthetic trajectories; from opaque value systems to traceable, contextual provenance; from reactive consumer decisions to long-term planning and authorship. In doing so, it invites members into a new relationship with the world: one that is grounded in clarity, enriched by history, and empowered by design.

Each section of this essay explores a different facet of this transformation—from visibility and conservation to personalization, economic impact, and the evolving role of records, staging, and memory. The goal is to articulate not only what the LWM makes possible, but what it makes valuable: attention, intention, and care. These are the qualities that define the new world of things. In this sense, we imagine a world that is less driven by ownership and more by how we shape it through thoughtful decisions, the homes that result, and the community that is drawn together.

II. Visibility

We live in a world defined by things—by the furniture we sit on, the objects we collect, the tools we rely on, and the artifacts we inherit. And yet, despite this centrality, most of us have little visibility into what we own, what surrounds us, or how it all fits together. Our material world is often fragmented, opaque, and disorganized—not because of a lack of value, but because of a lack of structure. What’s missing is not more stuff, but a better way to see, understand, and work with what already exists. This section explores how the Large World Model (LWM) creates a new kind of visibility—one that reveals the relationships between things, spaces, services, and people in a way that is structured, dynamic, and meaningful.

The LWM makes it possible to see and organize all of the things in one’s life—both as an inventory and as a structured, evolving taxonomy. Rather than being limited to a single categorical system, the model operates through overlapping sets: one object might belong to a family of similar products, to a historical style, to a specific room, to a service relationship, or to a member’s personal collection. This multiplicity of sets allows for a nuanced and highly flexible understanding of how things function—individually, relationally, and collectively. Instead of simply assigning every item to a static label, we deploy a framework that enables new perspectives through which to view one’s world.

What emerges is a broad and generative vision of organization—one that extends beyond things to include the spaces that contain them and the services that sustain them. The LWM does not isolate objects from context; instead, it integrates them into the ecology of the home. A chair is not just a chair—it is a part of a seating arrangement, an element in a design narrative, a recipient of wear, a product of a maker, and a node in a logistics network. This level of interconnectedness supports a much more comprehensive understanding of what exists, how it is used, and what it might become.

Importantly, this visibility is both technical and personal. The model enables a layered understanding of types, sets, collections, and individual things as they relate to personal style. It can map trends and commonalities across members while also allowing for a deeply customized lens for each user. What matters to one person—whether mid-century icons, minimalist ceramics, or inherited antiques—can be foregrounded and made meaningful. In this way, the LWM goes beyond being a tool for classification and becomes a framework for identity, taste, and desire.

This level of structured understanding leads to a greater ability to make sense of the vast world of things. The LWM can take a position—both statistical and stylistic—on the meaning of the set. It can show what’s common and what’s rare, what’s gaining or losing popularity, how styles evolve, and what these trends say about our cultural moment. It allows for a design narrative to emerge, grounded in real data and real lives while also supporting a narrative of desire that captures both what people want as well as why and how that desire is shaped, mirrored, or challenged by the things around them.

At the same time, it is important to note that our goal is not to drive absolute visibility. Instead, the LWM offers latent visibility—a vast and growing map of things that remains largely in the background until called upon. The purpose of the model is not to generate an all encompassing image, but instead a knowledgebase that can guide action. Members can ask specific questions—What do I own that’s made of oak? What styles are similar to this lamp? Who else collects these pieces?—and receive answers that are situated within the larger set. This conditional approach avoids overwhelming members with complexity while still offering extraordinary depth when needed. It is a visibility shaped by curiosity, by utility, and by intention. In making the material world visible in this way, the LWM both solves a problem of organization and opens up a new way of relating to things. It offers a structure through which our homes, objects, and styles become more manageable and meaningful. In doing so, it begins to reveal what we have, who we are, and how we live.

III. A New Understanding of Value and Conservation

Enhancing the visibility of something provides space to showcase its meaning and for the specific nature of this meaning to transform and grow in significance. Doing so not only creates more room for use and enjoyment of that thing, it also provides a route towards preservation. Beyond helping individuals see and organize their material world, the Large World Model (LWM) lays the foundation for a more intelligent, transparent, and sustainable relationship with the things we make, own, use, and pass on. Through end-to-end tracking, contextualization, and layered visibility, the LWM enables a new understanding of value—economic, cultural, material—and creates the infrastructure needed for long-term conservation at scale.

At its core, this model enables us to know what goes into every object—both materially and narratively. It captures the origins of each thing: the type of wood, the source of the textile, the labor practices, the methods of assembly. It also encodes its cultural lineage: where it was made, by whom, and within what tradition. It tracks ownership history, restoration, use, and significance. A simple chair becomes more than a seat. It becomes a story—a convergence of inputs, meanings, and events that have shaped its existence. This depth of insight can then support the ability to more accurately assess value beyond market price as a function of provenance, durability, uniqueness, and meaning. When one can see what already exists—every variant of a typology, every model of a chair, every copy of a table—and understand the environmental cost of making more, the rationale for reuse and preservation becomes both ethical and economic. The model supports a clearer understanding of what can be recycled, reused, refurbished, or deconstructed for parts. It points to a future in which materials circulate across generations of products, in which making something new always begins with understanding what already is.

This framework also brings clarity to a space that has long been opaque: the hierarchy of furniture and home goods. By organizing the world’s things in relation to craft traditions, regional identities, and historical styles, the LWM makes it possible to trace how a piece was made, why it costs what it does, and what values it embodies. The buying process becomes both a transaction and an education. Consumers can begin to align themselves with specific traditions—Scandinavian woodworking, Japanese joinery, Shaker simplicity, Bauhaus modularity—as meaningful personal connections. In doing so, they begin to participate in the continuation of those traditions, extending their legacy through care and use.

This leads to a shift in how design is evaluated and promoted. Rather than pushing surface-level trends or platform-driven aesthetics, the LWM encourages an investment in good design—design that is responsive to the needs of a given life phase, that is built to last, that holds cultural significance, and that is made with care. And when something is no longer needed, the model provides a path: for recycling it responsibly, refurbishing it for the next member, or returning it to its material components for reuse. In the process, we hope that design becomes both about taste and stewardship.

All of this makes possible a smarter, more circular approach to materials—an economy that both reduces waste and enriches the value of what we already have. As more members engage with this system, a feedback loop emerges: the better the visibility, the better the understanding of value; the better the understanding of value, the more likely things are to be preserved, reused, and loved. Over time, the platform itself becomes an engine of conservation—one that doesn’t just encourage sustainability as a moral imperative but embeds it as a practical, desirable, and even luxurious way to live. In this light, the LWM becomes an essential infrastructure for the next hundred years of design. More than a catalog or database, it can serve as a living index of human ingenuity, material intelligence, and cultural continuity. 

IV. One Thing Among the Vastness

Amid the sea of objects, histories, and data points made accessible by the Large World Model (LWM), a paradox arises: the more we see, the more significance the singular thing can carry. Rather than erasing individuality via scale, it can be amplified in cases where the thing resonates with a particular community. In the process, it becomes a gravitational center. A single chair, textile, lamp, or cabinet can anchor meaning, memory, and design intention within and across traditions and communities. The LWM seeks to cultivate and enhance this resonance by empowering cohorts of value what matters most to them rather than relying strictly on what macro tastemakers have, over time, promoted as having value and aura.

To do so, we must understand what gives one object this power. We believe that, in part, the answer lies in its history, craftsmanship, quality, mystery, the wonder it provokes, and the desire that it causes to arise. The best things—whether humble or monumental—grow with us. They accumulate meaning both through provenance and through lived experience with those objects. In this sense, their quality is measured both in how they were made and in how this quality allows them to endure, how it provokes care, and how it allows them to continue to offer value. Anchored in time, place, and identity, these singular things become touchstones within a member’s domestic world.

The emergence of an intelligent, structured system like the LWM seeks to enhance this aura. The expanded scale of data makes it possible to frame and situate the object in its full context: historical, stylistic, material, and social. Far from flattening the singular into a sea of equivalents, the LWM acts like a curatorial eye—helping individuals see why something matters and how it fits into a broader narrative. A single object becomes the entry point into a story about taste, tradition, and identity. It becomes the member’s story.

With the introduction of digital twins, the object’s capacity for meaning is multiplied. No longer reliant on external annotations, expert knowledge, or fragile documentation, the thing now carries its own embedded intelligence. It contains guidance on placement, care, environmental needs, spatial relationships, and even behavioral preferences. A well-documented object can influence the layout of a room, the function of a space, and eventually, the design of an entire home. The qualities embedded in that one thing, when understood, become principles by which a larger domestic world can be designed.

Historically, the act of selecting such an object is not strictly driven by market logic or mere utility. It is often highly intuitive and, in some cases, might even feel somewhat random. It emerges from a person’s lived history, aesthetic memory, cultural background, or longing for something once known. In order to align with this lived experience of how we create meaningful spaces in which to live, the LWM cannot prescribe taste. Instead, it must help bring our intuitions to the surface and connect them to the products and services that can make our vision for the future a reality. By displacing the authority of institutional collecting and elite curatorship, it shifts meaning to the individual and to the local. Members become stewards of their own narratives, and from this granular materiality, larger trends and archetypes emerge.

These meanings are further enriched by understanding how the thing came to be—who designed it, why it was manufactured in a certain way, what conditions shaped its production. The lineage of makers and ideas is no longer invisible. For each thing, there is now a pathway back through time: to the workshop, the movement, the hands that shaped it. This creates new dimensions of value and allows members to connect not just with objects, but with the traditions that made them possible. It also means that some members will build richer and more resonant worlds than others. Certain collections may become influential not only because of what they contain, but because of the coherence of their vision and the stories they tell. These worlds become magnetic—trophies not of status, but of articulation. Through them, the member becomes both collector and author, both curator and protagonist.

This culmination can result in transcendent spaces—rooms and homes that defy stylistic classification. These environments become stages for life. They are events in themselves, drawing people in through their presence, atmosphere, and narrative density. The objects become invitations. People want to be there, to inhabit the idea the space expresses, to be shaped by its care and clarity. Often, these spaces are animated by a singular individual—someone whose charisma, discernment, and presence define the collection. Their aura becomes inseparable from the objects themselves. They do not just curate a look; they enact a worldview. The LWM, if structured well, can democratize this possibility. It can make it possible for others—those without access to iconic objects, historic knowledge, or training in taste—to participate in this process of authorship.

This promise of participation is perhaps the most radical implication: that the LWM can redistribute aesthetic agency. For too long, taste has been concentrated in the hands of those who could afford to purchase meaning, or who were educated in the systems that defined it. Many others were relegated to the role of producers—fabricators, finishers, craftspeople—responsible for the execution but denied authorship. The model challenges this structure. It enables those who were once excluded to understand the systems of value and, in turn, be given the opportunity to influence them through a new toolset for reclaiming that authorship. In this way, the singular thing becomes more than a possession. It becomes a vessel for reorientation—a way of locating oneself within a vast, interconnected, and evolving world.

V. Specific Rather Than General Style

The dominant frameworks for understanding style today remain reductive. Whether in search engines, design platforms, or editorial features, classification tends to flatten aesthetic expression into a set of predetermined categories—“Mid-Century Modern,” “Scandinavian Minimalism,” “Boho,” “Traditional.” This model is convenient, but conceptually brittle. It encourages conformity, obscures nuance, and reflects a commercial logic more than a cultural one. Worse, it limits the possibilities for individuals to articulate a style that is personal, evolving, and complex. This section explores how the Large World Model (LWM) can enable a shift from general style categories to the cultivation of highly specific and meaningful styles—styles that move beyond being descriptors in order to become expressions of identity, context, and vision.

Traditionally, style has been organized through the lens of periodization. Art and design history rely on a logic of grouping works into movements and epochs. New works are judged not only by their innovation but by their relation to an anticipated future narrative—how they will be positioned in retrospect, what they will come to represent. This approach is deeply ingrained in how professionals are trained and how media platforms present taste. For individuals trying to make decisions about their home, this framework is often unhelpful. It tends to reinforce a narrow canon, and to prioritize coherence over exploration.

The LWM offers a new model—one that starts with specificity rather than genre. It allows professionals to identify patterns and affinities with greater precision while also inviting individuals to discover and articulate styles that reflect their own stories. The model can track visual similarities between objects as well as their histories, functions, and emotional registers. Style is no longer a label applied from above—it emerges from use, selection, and resonance. Through structured learning, members can build a more intimate understanding of their own taste, and how it connects with broader cultural movements.

This approach becomes even more powerful when layered with a temporal and social dimension. The LWM introduces a temporal framework that is experiential and bound to a set of relationships between actions, agents, and goals. Members can trace their own evolution of taste over time—what they loved, what they let go of, what they returned to. They can revisit old choices, refine them, or reinterpret them. At the same time, the model tracks community relationships: influence, affinity, and access. One’s style is no longer isolated but situated—understood in relation to others with shared values, similar backgrounds, or parallel discoveries. This creates a context in which style can be both individual and communal, stable and porous.

The result is a system that builds confidence without calcifying identity. Members can commit to choices without being trapped by them. The LWM provides a framework for clarity, but also for growth. It encourages experimentation, refinement, and alignment. Style becomes less about subscribing to a trend, and more about composing a world—intentionally, dynamically, and with increasing self-awareness. By moving beyond generic classifications, the LWM supports the development of new kinds of style—styles that may never have existed before, but that feel exactly right for a given person, place, and time. 

VI. Personal Style Driving the Economy

In most consumer systems, desire is orchestrated through a push economy: ads surface products; influencers signal trends; platforms engineer frictionless transactions. This model relies on interruption and manipulation. It demands constant attention, and it rarely begins with the individual. The Large World Model (LWM) reorients this dynamic entirely—placing personal style, rather than marketing strategy, at the center of economic motion. Instead of pushing products toward people, the model enables individuals to pull the right things toward themselves. In this shift, personal taste becomes the engine of commerce.

At the heart of this is a recognition: there exists a finite set of things one might realistically own over the course of a life. Furniture, tools, art, appliances, clothing—each of these enters and exits our lives at specific intervals, shaped by needs, transitions, space, and budget. The LWM helps to structure these decisions as part of a longer arc. It establishes a hierarchy of roles to fill: anchor pieces that define a space, supporting goods that complement them, service providers that care for them, family and community who contribute meaning and memory. The result is a slow and steady orchestration of acquisition that begins with individual limitations—preferences, constraints, goals—and places them in dialogue with a much larger dataset of possibilities. The LWM gathers the total set: every object extracted from every image, catalog, showroom, influencer post, design history, and brand archive. This totality could be overwhelming, but it is made manageable through intelligent filtering. The model surfaces only what is relevant, based on a person’s taste, space, timing, and goals.

At the same time, the platform preserves a deep connection to the rare and the aspirational. Some things carry aura—objects with history, uniqueness, or cultural weight. The LWM can identify and present these things, while also offering accessible analogs through image recognition and material proximity. It doesn't flatten distinction, but contextualizes it—helping members understand what a rare object means, why it matters, and what more attainable versions might still carry the same feeling. Rather than being encouraged to copy taste, the member is given the tools for interpretation and, in the process, can enhance their fluency in material culture.

This system also introduces visibility into what is normally obscured: cost, lead time, quality, and fit. With this clarity, members can narrow their decisions down to a set of three or so viable options—each with slight differences in price, availability, and provenance. The final decision is theirs, made with confidence and understanding. In this way, the platform supports both precision and autonomy. It respects the agency of the member while providing the structure needed to reduce friction and regret.

As more members engage in this way, personal style becomes a macroeconomic force. The aggregated choices of individuals shape which images rise in prominence, which traits become more or less valued, which objects accrue cultural capital. More than a catalog, the LWM is a feedback system. It tracks how members engage with objects: what they linger on, what they save, what they buy, what they live with over time. These behaviors in turn inform how value is assigned—transforming engagement into a living index of taste and economic motion. In this framework, the economy is no longer driven by hype or artificial scarcity. It is guided by grounded decisions, informed desire, and long-term relationships with things. Personal style becomes the scaffolding through which meaning, commerce, and sustainability are aligned.

VII. Knowing When to Buy What

In a world saturated with options, one of the most paralyzing aspects of consumption is timing. When should I buy this? Is this the best version I can find? Will something better—or cheaper—appear tomorrow? This uncertainty creates decision fatigue, emotional friction, and, often, regret. The Large World Model (LWM) alleviates this burden by contextualizing choices via bringing clarity to the complex web of parameters that influence when and why we acquire the things we do. This new visibility radically simplifies the decision-making process. When members are presented with options, they are not simply browsing what’s available—they are seeing what is best for them across a range of relevant parameters: quality, price, fit, timing, sustainability, brand alignment, aesthetic consistency. The confidence that comes from knowing you’ve found the right thing, at the right time, according to your own values and context, transforms a purchase from a gamble into a meaningful step forward in shaping the world you are building.

This moment—of confidently choosing a thing—becomes a powerful union of member and object. It ties agency to transformation. That agency is the ultimate value proposition of the LWM: the ability to not only see and understand the material world, but to have deep support in transforming it with clarity, creativity, care, and efficiency. To support this process, the entire visual and interaction logic of the platform must reflect this deeper relationship between member, thing, and transformation. Beyond a storefront, the platform is a planning surface, a narrative frame, a personal design studio. Its UI/UX does not push products based on extrapolated behavioral predictions, but pulls options based on known, expressed, and evolving desire. 

The result is ease of mind as members feel as if everything is going according to plan. They trust the system to track the long arc of their vision—even when they are not actively engaged. The LWM holds the timeline, the inventory, the wishlist, the goals. This sense of continuity is essential to building confidence and reducing stress in a world where consumer platforms too often encourage impulse and confusion. This becomes especially critical for the kinds of things that require lead time—custom furniture, commissioned objects, renovations, installations. These are not point-and-click transactions. They require coordination, planning, and foresight. The LWM helps manage these timelines, ensuring that desire is not disconnected from feasibility. In doing so, it makes long-term planning both possible and pleasurable.

VIII. A New Richness of Experience

As the LWM enables greater visibility, personalization, and planning, an entirely new kind of experience emerges. This experience deepens our relationship with the material world, with the history of design, and with our own personal aspirations. In this new paradigm, the process of planning, selecting, and transforming our homes becomes more than functional—it becomes imaginative, narrative, and rich with agency. At the core of this richness is a kind of learning that empowers. As members begin to understand the taxonomy and history of things—how a chair came to be, why one textile feels more resonant than another—they engage more deeply with the world around them. The result goes beyond more informed purchasing to become a new level of authorship. The home becomes a site of expression, no longer shaped entirely by what is available or convenient, but by what is meaningful. The system allows members to start with a dream or inspiration before supporting them in planning and execution. Eventually, it can help engage professionals to bring their visions to life. The process connects aspiration with reality, coordinates across services and lead times, and even opens pathways for more localized or artisanal production. 

We are no longer bound to the room as it currently stands. The LWM offers a timeline of possibility—what has been owned, what is loved, what is dreamt of. It provides visibility both into one’s personal catalog as well as into community collections, neighborhood inventories, and exemplary places. The present room becomes porous: open to past influences, future intentions, and distant inspirations. One can live with what is, while also designing what could be.

This imagination is further enabled by immersive tools. Augmented and virtual reality become essential extensions of the platform as practical, expressive technologies. They allow members to step into a projected future, to test configurations, to dream with more precision. Suddenly, planning is no longer abstract—it becomes embodied. Members can feel what it’s like to live with a particular object, layout, or style before they commit. It enhances the act of dreaming, and grounds it in action.

These capabilities can extend into the public sphere via a reimagined retail experience. Today’s department stores would no longer be static, impersonal showrooms, but dynamic, style-driven worlds–each one curated around the specific preferences of the members who will visit that day. Objects could be grouped by aesthetic and emotional logic. Adjacent items suggest connections and spark discovery. Virtual staging lets members see combinations come to life–all supported by a dedicated space for storing goods over time, staging a project in phases, and returning to it when ready.

These spaces would ideally be social. Adjoining cafés and restaurants would encourage dialogue, reflection, and community-building. Workshops, pop-ups, exhibitions, and brand activations would turn the store into a stage. One might encounter a full-scale, customizable home; a rare design object; a leading architect giving a talk; a new brand launching its vision; or an installation by a socially engaged design collective. These experiences elevate the platform from utility to cultural infrastructure. They create memory, emotion, and momentum.

The implications stretch far beyond retail. If the LWM can successfully organize the fragmented furniture and home goods market—across styles, histories, brands, and budgets—it unlocks something larger: the opportunity to integrate the adjacent sectors of architecture, real estate, storage, logistics, insurance, repair, maintenance, and cultural heritage. Each of these markets intersects with the domestic environment but remains largely disconnected. The LWM becomes the connective tissue as a new layer of the tech stack that is closer to real life, more attuned to how people actually live.

X. The Restoration of Trust

At its core, our work is about restoring trust—trust in our own decisions, in the value of the things we choose to live with, and in the broader systems that shape our material world. In a time when domestic life feels increasingly uncertain, fragmented, and reactive—when global crises amplify a sense of dislocation—the home should offer clarity. The LWM answers this need via infrastructure that provides a structure for documenting, planning, and maintaining our spaces that creates real alignment between desire and reality. It is through this alignment that trust emerges—trust in the process, in the platform, and in oneself.

The ultimate goal is to create a shared frame of reference through a structured, richly indexed archive of things, places, and traditions that each member can draw from to craft a vision that is uniquely theirs. The platform enables individuals to define, pursue, and refine their goals over time. It supports both the acquisition of objects and the shaping of a life—guided by personal meaning, community influence, and an evolving understanding of value.

As members build their homes, they gradually move from filling static roles—chairs to sit on, tables to eat at, lights to turn on—to activating dynamic possibilities. Things are no longer an end in themselves. They become tools, stages, and support structures for the events that define a life: a renovation that renews identity, a garden that reorients a family’s rhythm, a curated collection that tells a story, a celebration that brings meaning to space. Over time, the focus shifts from consumption to creation, from acquisition to articulation. Things don’t just furnish a room—they furnish a narrative.

This is where the richness truly begins: in the ongoing interplay between past and future, aspiration and action, the physical and the digital. With the LWM as a trusted companion, members can see what they want as well as why it matters and how they might best achieve their goals. The platform offers guidance, but never pressure. It simplifies without dumbing down. It helps members keep track of what matters, and gently nudges them toward the goals they’ve defined for themselves. And in doing so, it helps them avoid the false promises of empty trends, misaligned purchases, and the wasteful churn of hyper-consumption.

Ultimately, we hope to offer more than innovation in technology and commerce by supporting a new generation of stewardship and conservation of taste, of shared histories, of exceptional places and collections, and of resources. It is a vision for how we might live with greater care and clarity—more attuned to the things that support us, more aware of the histories we carry forward, and more empowered to shape the world we inhabit. We believe this vision can support both a better home and a better life.