A tombstone is a good example of a product made to do. Tombstones aren’t made for the sake of being manipulated in any special way: They aren’t made for us to do anything with or to them, even as a means of doing something with or to other things. Instead, tombstones are made for the sake of doing something themselves. They are made so that they can be set up to commemorate dead people at gravesites; and once set up at such sites, that’s what the tombstones themselves do.

Quite a few of the things we call “instruments” also belong in this class of products made to do. All those instruments we use to find out things about other things — such instruments as thermometers, barometers, and all the other o-meters — belong here, for example. So do watches and clocks. What clocks do is tell the time, which is why we can find out what time it is by looking at a clock. In the same way, thermometers are made to tell the temperature, and it’s only because they do so that we can find out whether somebody has a fever, for instance, by sticking a thermometer in that person’s mouth, ear, or other orifice, and then reading it.

Most products designed to be watched, looked at, read, or observed are products made to do, rather than to be done unto. (After all, watching, looking at, reading, or observing don’t as such do anything to what’s watched, looked at, read or observed.) Such products are made to do a large variety of things. Some are made to entertain or amuse, others to shock or frighten. Some products of the type in question are made to divert us, others are made to inform us; some are made to enrage, soothe, or teach us, whereas others are made to indicate or signify something to us. Sometimes such products are made for the sake of doing only one such thing, sometimes to do a number of such things together, either sequentially or all at once.

Such products can be neatly subdivided into those that do whatever they do because they’re watched, looked at, read, or observed, on one hand, and those that are watched, looked at, read, or observed because of what they do. Products designed to indicate or signify, for example, all belong to the second subclass: they are watched or whatever because of what they do.

Take a thermometer again. It’s because the thermometer, by its level of mercury, indicates the temperature that we look at it when we want to know just that, the temperature. Or take a clock. It’s because the position of the hands on the clock’s face indicates the time that we look at it when we want to know what time it is. An American flag works the same way: we look at the flag when we want to pledge allegiance or the like, because the flag symbolizes our country.

On the other hand, products made, say, to infuriate or entertain us aren’t like the flag or clock or thermometer in that way. Instead, they do what they’re supposed to do only thanks to our watching them or whatever. That’s because the sort of thing they’re supposed to do is always something they’re supposed to do to us, the very people what watch them or whatever.

So one could also draw the distinction in question this way: all those products designed to be watched, etc., are products made to do something, but only some of them are made to do it to us.

Almost every television program, as well as most movies, records, and books — and this post itself — are products designed to do something to us. When what they’re made to do to us is something we want done to us, or at least something we don’t mind being done to us and see no reason to mind, then that’s okay with us. But when they’re made to do to us something we don’t want done to us, or think there’s some reason to mind being done to us or others, it’s not okay with us; and we mark our displeasure by saying some such thing as that the product is manipulative. All propaganda, of course, is manipulative, even though not everything that’s manipulative is propaganda.

So much for products made to do.

That leaves, for my nest post, products made, that then just do.