Dead Sea Scrolls

When looking at 2,000 year old pieces of paper, you begin to predict (or at least I do) what texts from your time will still be around 2,000 years from now. Chances are, the books on my shelf will not be, nor will much of anything else, for from dust it came and from dust it will return, etc. Physical is physical, and it has a shelf life. There are of course rarities, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, which defied physical logic by surviving in readable intact-ness for over 20 centuries in a cave by the saltiest place on earth, only to end up at the Milwaukee Public Museum in 2010 for my Saturday night enjoyment.

But even when our books--and iPods and iPhones and Kindles--disintegrate back into dust, there will be billions upon billions of webpages and digital data--that will theoretically last forever--detailing their introduction into society, how they were used, and when they were finally phased out. The digital will outlast the physical, and there will be very little mystery about how these objects from the past came about and influenced our world. While going through the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, I kept thinking about how much less exciting archeology will become for people as time goes on.