In the 2007 book, The World Without Us, Alan Weisman imagines Earth minus all the humans. Of course, Stern is not the first to call up the question of what happens to our stuff when we are gone. Collectively, the artworks ask viewers to rethink materials: Could phones be compostable? Can a computer be reborn as a hammer? In a 200-page catalog that accompanies the artworks, he brings up the possibility of better regulation around manufacturing electronics the “amount of waste produced just to make our phones and computers in the first place” is considerable, to say nothing of the waste they create when they’re no longer in use. ![]() But in Stern’s case, this reimagining is meant to provoke political change. The project of “rethinking” may seem underwhelming (like an art novice tilting her head to consider a piece of modern art: “It really makes you think”). ![]() Of course those are not usable, but it’s a hopeful rethinking.” “There’s also the circuit board cut into a hacksaw and an axe. “We melted down those aluminum iMacs and turned them into a hammer, a wrench, and a screwdriver,” Stern says. Other electronics were destroyed and then repurposed into functional objects. The human legacy will not be the Pyramids of Giza or the Taj Mahal but this great quantity of refuse, things that once turned on, that once held humanity’s collective attention. By some estimates, 4 million mobile phones were sold every day in 2018, to say nothing of the unsold phones or the outdated phones they replaced. Imagine, then, the world beyond the Anthropocene-an era that will be defined by this great amount of electronic refuse. Then the old gadgets are turned off and thrown away, rather than reused, repaired, or otherwise reimagined. They are designed to be coveted, and counted on, only until manufacturers can develop the next version. Consumer electronics are both disposable and indestructible. ![]() Never mind that the usable life of most gadgets lasts about as long as the average betta fish, fated to swim around a glass bowl for a year or two until it is dumped, unceremoniously, down the toilet. It is a matter of fact, and a fact of matter: Technology consists of stuff estranged from the earth, plastic and metal and silicon, while our soft bodies will one day returneth to dust. Most of your electronics-your phone, tablet, smartwatch, desktop computer, laptop, beeper, pager, e-reader, smart television, dumb television, soundbar, speaker system, camera-enabled doorbell-will outlive you.
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