Obsolete Modern Gadgets Reimagined as Future Fossils

Today we get excited about finding a piece of ancient pottery or other relic of historic civilization. What will the humans of the future get excited about? They’ll find caches of ancient iPods, rich deposits of cell phones and veins of amazing finds like cassette tapes and rotary phones.

Artist Christopher Locke imagines the relics of our lives that future civilizations will one day use to learn about us. He creates them in concrete, making each one by hand with a great amount of detail to reflect their intricate electronic nature.

These future fossils show the remains of a consumerism-obsessed society. They may be manufactured fossils, but they’re probably not far off from the actual fossils that future civilizations will encounter from our time here on Earth: bits of metal and plastic that remain largely unchanged with the passage of time.

According to the artist’s website, the various “species” represented in these modern fossils all lived sadly short lifespans due to our wastefulness and runaway consumerism. Whether to commemorate your favorite piece of obsolete technology or make a poignant comment on the disposability of today’s lifestyle, these concrete replicas perfectly capture the essence of the technology we’ve loved and then left behind.

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See more in Art of Tech or under Technology. June, 2010.