We've all known that a copy of a copy of a copy loses parts of the original. Here's something cool that showed up on BoingBoing. think about this, in terms of many different things:
Culture - when things get borrowed or recycled to the point that the original meaning is lost (traditions/ceremonies/holidays)....
Music, etc
....and now...on with our show:
http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boing...mbodies-l.html
Artist Daniel Bejar had a key copied and then a new key copied from it, and so on, until the information embodied in the original key had been lost. He calls the resulting piece "The Visual Topography of a Generation Gap": "A copy was made from my original apartment key, then a copy was made from that copy. This process was repeated until the original keys information was destroyed, resulting in the topography of a generation."
"The Visual Topography of a Generation Gap"(#2, Brooklyn, NY) (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)