In 2018, an estimated 4 million mobile phones were sold every day鈥攁 figure which does not include phones that were manufactured but unsold. Once you include phone charges, computers, and tablets, the scale of our technology waste is astronomical.聽And since most of these products are encased in plastic, they鈥檒l take hundreds of years to decompose.
Stern was inspired by a book by journalist Alan Weisman of the same name, which invites readers to imagine how our massive technological infrastructure would crumble and fossilize once humans no longer walk the earth. Stern has given us some visual cues about what would happen to our everyday objects.聽There are many curious items on display, including a piece cleverly called Photosynthesis that features a small plant growing out of a Panasonic Lumix camera. There鈥檚 a large wall covered in plants whose tendrils snake around open laptops, keyboards, cassette tapes, and pieces of a motherboard that have been hung up. There are even pieces of electronic equipment that have long been out of use: An old-fashioned corded phone has leaves growing out of the dial pad.
Everything about the exhibit鈥攊ncluding its title鈥攔eminds us of our own eventual demise. But it also forces us to consider that while we鈥檙e organic creatures that will return to the earth, we have fashioned materials that will long outlive us. And we don鈥檛 give enough thought to how these items will live on鈥攁nd perhaps take on new lives of their own鈥攐nce plants and animals find a way to live around them.