Co-operative action is not restricted to states of copresence. As noted by phenomenologists, we find ourselves surrounded by objects that embody resources and solutions created by earlier actors who are no longer present. Though lacking the unique attributes of what Goffman called mutual monitoring, and Schutz the We-Relationship, these materials, which include sedimented architectures for perception, are made relevant to current tasks through accumulative co-operative transformations. An airport worker charged with monitoring the readiness of aircraft for on-time departure uses a vernacular document created by her predecessors, a schedule, as an environmental lamination to transform the airplanes she sees into time-saturated work-relevant objects with destinations and departure times. When a mechanical problem is seen she can note it with a concise abbreviation on the appropriate row of the schedule. Such accumulative reuse with transformation of the flight information inherited from her predecessors is formally the same as the transformative reuse of language structure created by prior speakers examined in earlier chapters.

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