The way we live now, tagged and displayed

The above are contemporary objects, that are part of London's Victoria and Albert Museum's Rapid Response Collection.

The objects are historical in the sense that they carry with them a rich social and economic context. A set of Katy Perry "Cool Kitty" eyelashes links, says Corinna Gardner, the curator of the Collection, links one of the world's most famous women with a factory working woman in Indonesia. There is an e-cigarette, and a pair of Primark cargo trousers that were made at the Rana Plaza factory, in Bangladesh, which collapsed in 2013, killing a majority of the garment workers. 

I just loved the story of LUFSIG. LUFSIG is a plush toy made by IKEA and sold in China where the name translated to the Cantonese word meaning "your mother's vagina" and led to large-scale protests.  

Among the vast range of objects are a smart thermostat, a virtual-reality headset, a 3-D printed gun, a carbon-fibre cable that will allow elevators to rise twice as high as they can now, a wearable computer terminal (Motorola, 2013), and Flappy Bird, the mobile game designed by a Vietnamese game developer.

The one heart-breaking item on the list is the anti-homeless spikes labelled the "Spike Stud, 2014, stainless steel." The studs are used to deter loiterers and the homeless from usurping public place to make a temporary home. 

The goal of the Rapid Response Collecting is to demonstrate "how design reflects and defines how we live together today." Says the curator further, "It's about looking into the world to see what's going on." The exhibition will be continually updated and is interested in provoking conversation on timely issues. In other words, the museum is a blog embodied.

The question the Collection provokes is should objects representing the way we live now be curated and stored in Museums for posterity to behold how we lived and why? Perhaps by the time we enter a social phase where the poor and the homeless are shot out of the planet with high tech canon balls, the mere presence of spikes on surfaces will evoke jeers?