I am not a fan of these super-natural art projects. It is one thing to make a statue that might stand for a thousand years ... or not. It is another to designate forest land and other resources, to attempt to lock them away from use by future generations.
The legal system dealt with this hundreds of years ago. We cannot have "dead hands" dictating how future generations should live and work. The proper vehicle for such things is government. Donate the land as a park or nature preserve and cross your fingers that your intent will be respected.
A similar worry developed around the concept of compound interest. Some semi-rich people wanted to park money in bank accounts for a few generations in order to make thier great-grandkids into powerful people... with explicit instructions on how to use that money/power. Such multi-generation shenanigans are against the general public interest.
> We cannot have "dead hands" dictating how future generations should live and work
The whole world is dictated by dead hands. I cannot walk around pristine forests (maybe I even need to pre-register), I need to deal with bureaucracy, I need to pay taxes, almost every single landscape is ruined by human buildings, etc. So what is that even about?
We typically use the word "art", which, yes, is often performative and sometimes nonsense!
Not all art is to everyone's taste, and that's ok too. You don't have to enjoy this art piece. I find the idea of creating something that I cannot possibly enjoy to be quite poignant. But hey, I'm sure you have art you enjoy that I do not.
I agree, this is pure (US) boomer behavior, they still think that the world will care about them almost a century into the future from the moment of their deaths. The world won't do that, one of the reasons being that said boomers have been quite talentless given their resources.
Those trees will mature in 2050ish timeframe. If this person put together a trust to manage the particulars, they might be alive to ensure the trees get harvested and processed into paper.
Trees get turned into paper every day, I'm sure there's a paper mill willing to take the work, especially in Northern Europe.
Lock it in a massive ice block that takes 88 years to melt. https://elephant.art/laurie-anderson-duets-on-ice-performanc...
I am not a fan of these super-natural art projects. It is one thing to make a statue that might stand for a thousand years ... or not. It is another to designate forest land and other resources, to attempt to lock them away from use by future generations.
The legal system dealt with this hundreds of years ago. We cannot have "dead hands" dictating how future generations should live and work. The proper vehicle for such things is government. Donate the land as a park or nature preserve and cross your fingers that your intent will be respected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities
A similar worry developed around the concept of compound interest. Some semi-rich people wanted to park money in bank accounts for a few generations in order to make thier great-grandkids into powerful people... with explicit instructions on how to use that money/power. Such multi-generation shenanigans are against the general public interest.
It's 88 years. The odds of it falling afoul of the law against perpetuities is negligible and would indicate something catastrophic happened.
> We cannot have "dead hands" dictating how future generations should live and work
The whole world is dictated by dead hands. I cannot walk around pristine forests (maybe I even need to pre-register), I need to deal with bureaucracy, I need to pay taxes, almost every single landscape is ruined by human buildings, etc. So what is that even about?
[flagged]
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We typically use the word "art", which, yes, is often performative and sometimes nonsense!
Not all art is to everyone's taste, and that's ok too. You don't have to enjoy this art piece. I find the idea of creating something that I cannot possibly enjoy to be quite poignant. But hey, I'm sure you have art you enjoy that I do not.
We are so starved for aura we have to farm into the future now, I too would like to dine.
I agree, this is pure (US) boomer behavior, they still think that the world will care about them almost a century into the future from the moment of their deaths. The world won't do that, one of the reasons being that said boomers have been quite talentless given their resources.
> At the end of the project, the full anthology of texts will be printed using paper made from trees from the Future Library forest
remind me in 88 years.
Also, file in “things that will never happen.”
Those trees will mature in 2050ish timeframe. If this person put together a trust to manage the particulars, they might be alive to ensure the trees get harvested and processed into paper.
Trees get turned into paper every day, I'm sure there's a paper mill willing to take the work, especially in Northern Europe.
I like to imagine futures where they judge us through their standards as harshly as we judge the past through our standards.
So, instead of some future people celebrating this project, they just think "Ew, what kind of monster would wish harm on a beautiful old tree?"
Or they look on it with nostalgia because by then most people use emoji as written communication and have never learned to read.