I wonder whether the historicity of things will be lost in our digital age. When the orders of modern day kings originate on screens and are preserved in 0 and 1 will they be worth anything like the Magna Carta? No, probably not.
What of digitally created art? The original recording of a song, the Photoshop document an artist created or the AVI of a digital movie. A copy of any of these is as good as the original. The original file does not accrue value like a physical object.
I’m not sure it is a great loss. $21 million for something whose original value lies in the words and not the parchment seems a poor use of resources. The Magna Carta has had its affect and its affect is now independent of the parchment it was originally written on. Many a charity, non-profit or even a profit-seeking company would do much more good with $21 million.
Possibly though as we further converge digital and reality we will develop the complexity of digital items to the stage where “original” has some meaning and so we build historicity into them.
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