Objects

There's something going on with objects which I haven't fully figured out yet. It seems that perhaps the tendency of people to objectify the material world - by which I mean to compartmentalise it into discrete units (objects) - reached a peak some time around the 1930s and is now declining.
Perhaps this isn't true. But maybe if it is it's because the advent of manufacturing and the creation of lots of man-made objects in the 19th and early 20th centuries led people towards a recognition of the ability to compartmentalise the world in this way (whereas previously the world was just a load of overlapping 'stuff'). Whereas recently with the advent of the digital age we are moving away from that idea - the 'information units as objects' idea and a more encompassing / holistic world-view has led to a more fluid idea of what 'objects' are, and perhaps a feeling that they are less discrete / disconnected.
This occurred to me whilst listening to some swing jazz this morning, where the singer was talking about a number of different fruits. The lyrics implied a strong mental image of what the objects were, in a kind of Aristotelian 'ideal form' sense - something which I found didn't sit easily with me.  My view of what they were seemed kind of more fluid..
I wonder if this makes any sense.