Category: Things and Objects

In February 2011, Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired made the following assertion: “I say there is no species of technology that has ever gone globally extinct on this planet”.  You can listen to the NPR interview here.  In his book, What Technology Wants Kelly amplifies his argument writing:

A close examination of a supposedly extinct bygone technology almost always shows that somewhere on the planet someone is still producing it. A technique or artifact may be rare in the modern urban world but quite common in the developing rural world. For instance, Burma is full of oxcart technology; basketry is ubiquitous in most of Africa; hand spinning is still thriving in Bolivia. A supposedly dead technology may be enthusiastically embraced by a heritage-based minority in modern society, if only for ritual satisfaction. Consider the traditional ways of the Amish, or modern tribal communities or fanatical vinyl record collectors. Often old technology is obsolete, that is, it is not very ubiquitous or is second rate, but it still may be in small-time use.

Robert Krulwich, who interviewed Kelly for NPR took up the challenge and tried to find a technology that was truly extinct with the results posted on the interview’s comments section and here.

I have been thinking on and off about Kelly’s comment since archaeology in large measure relies on the regular life cycle of styles and technologies and yet has also long attended more to the additive, rather than subtractive, process of technological change.  Today I was pleased to see this story:

Technologies that weve lost – and the quest to find them again.

Greek fire and Damascus steel appear to represent technologies that are not currently under production.  Except, as the article points out, we do make other kinds of steel and we also have petroleum based substances that are used as military incendiaries.

One potential response to Kelly’s claim is to note how unique this historical period is.  Thanks to archaeology, we have not only curated current technologies, but also tried to recreate how ancient ones were made.  Hence, 500 years ago, Acheulean hand axes would have been an extinct technology, even if they are not today.  Thus Kelly’s claim seems to say less about history per se than it does about modernity’s museological impulse–the remarkable desire to resuscitate and curate formerly extinct technologies.

Looted Dishes Used in Art Project Returned to Iraq – NYTimes.com.

It is interesting that the artist does not appear to reflect upon his own role as a buyer of looted goods in the article or the accompanying short film.  20th century dinner plates may not elicit the same sense of despoliation of heritage that more ancient artifacts do, but it is interesting to contemplate why not?

Is it a quality intrinsic to an object that gives it, over time, an appearance of timelessness, a patina?  Or is the difference extrinsic to the thing, located in the social relationships within which the plates circulated?

From a legal perspective, it appears that the federal marshals regard the plates to be equivalent to any kind of looted artifact.  However, if the objects had been seized from a dealer in antiquities, I doubt that person would have been brought to the Iraqi embassy and interviewed by an art reporter for the Times.

What is interesting is that although the plates were looted, like thousand of other things stolen from Iraq during the last decade, they were rediscovered acting not like commodities but like art.  The plates were performing differently than the typical looted antiquity.  If they had been seized from the person who sold them on eBay, the reaction of governmental agents and the Iraqi authorities would have been quite different.  So their movement from the commodity field to the art field engenders quite distinct legal and presumably public responses.

But what if after the close of the performance art exhibition, the artist offered to sell the plates as art objects?