for each civilization must leave something tangible behind.
A visit to the Egyptian artifacts exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art got me thinking about what individuals like each of us produce during our lifetimes that would last long enough to be displayed in a museum a thousand years from now. To be honest, not much of what the Egyptians produced made it to our time. Sculptures of a few kings and queens, paintings of the laborers who were buried alive with their dead royalty, a few knives and tools. More sculptures of more Kings and Queens, and more tools. Those ancient Egyptians made things, though, out of stuff that would last for a dozen centuries. Will future generations view exhibits of our stuff and find iPods, laptops, and tablets? Will they stand in an exhibit theater and see billions of Facebook posts from billions of people over hundreds of years and trillions of YouTube videos shot by a billions of people over those same hundreds of years? Will we leave behind not our art, but pics of our art posted to our profiles? Will the museum of the future be a bunch of panoramic rooms lined with the latest television screens? Will a showroom condition Lexus make it to a museum floor? Or just the pic? Will anything we make right now last? How about a graveyard of mailboxes…
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