The Value of Historicity
David M. Rubenstein, a founder of the Carlyle Group, purcased a copy of the Magna Carta from Ross Perot for exactly $21,321,000. Ross Perot bought it in 1984 for $1.5 million.
Just when digital reproduction makes it possible to create a “Rembrandt� good enough to fool the eye, the “real� Rembrandt becomes more expensive than ever. Why? Because the same free flow that makes information cheap and reproducible helps us treasure the sight of information that is not. A story gains power from its attachment, however tenuous, to a physical object. The object gains power from the story. The abstract version may flash by on a screen, but the worn parchment and the fading ink make us pause. The extreme of scarcity is intensified by the extreme of ubiquity.
