Matt Novak, writing at his brilliant Paleofuture:
In 1922, eccentric magazine publisher Hugo Gernsback decided that the world needed a 1,000-foot tall concrete monument to electricity. Gernsback imagined that this monument might last for thousands of years, and rather than some static behemoth stuck in time, the interior of his monument would be constantly changed to reflect the technological advances of each new generation.
A museum of modern technology, to be housed in a skeuomorphic monolith that was all-but-certain to become outdated. I’m guessing the irony was lost on him.
What form would a Gernsback monument take on today? A solar panel? A windmill? A server farm? Somehow those don’t seem to be equivalent to a dynamo. Maybe a better question is, is there anything from today that is worthy of or fitting for skeuomorphism on a monumental scale?