Prime Object

The prime object is the rarest and most consequential category of artifact in Kubler's framework. It is not the best, most refined, or most beautiful object in a sequence — it is the first, the artifact that demonstrates a new class of solutions exists. The first flying buttress was almost certainly cruder than the ones that followed at Chartres and Reims. The first steel produced by the Bessemer process was inferior to later refinements. The first ARPANET message crashed mid-transmission. Each was a prime object because each demonstrated that a new formal sequence was possible. Its significance lies not in its quality but in the irreversible expansion of possibility it enacts. After a prime object exists, the sequence it opens can be filled, explored, and elaborated. Before it exists, the sequence is not yet part of what can be thought.