We live in a world where new information is constantly at our fingertips. We’ve been told that this has affected our attention spans, our memorization skills, our ability to concentrate. When scanning the web, we may balk at a large block of text, bookmarking and moving on to bigger headlines, something we can skim. There’s always the option to browse for something more immediate, to click the sidebar, or refresh the feed. The web has changed the way information is shared, and it’s changed the way stories are told. We’ve learned that web content needs to be brief and to the point to accommodate the new reader. Every word counts. Good design matters.

Does this mean that people aren’t really reading anymore? That storytelling doesn’t have value? Thanks to Significant Objects, we can rest assured that (for now) people still understand the value of the story. An experiment exploring the effect of narrative on subjective value, the Significant Objects project used writers, garage sale objects and eBay to test the value of storytelling. Over 200 participating writers were paired with an object purchased for about $1.25. Each writer wrote a short story to be used in place of the object’s description and the object was put up for bid on eBay. So far, object sales have brought in more than $8,000. How’s that for objective proof of the value of the story?