Today's trash and tomorrow's art

Do you ever catch yourself doing it? Complaining at length about your offspring's addiction to What'sApp/Minecraft/YouTube/Instagram, yet in the same breath getting all nostalgic and misty-eyed about obscure 1970s TV shows?

Marshall McLuhan, the great communications theorist, expressed it thus: Each new technology creates an environment that is itself regarded as corrupt and degrading. Yet the new one turns its predecessor into an art form.

We can see this in the world of advertising, too. I posted here about the beauty of 1920s London Underground Posters, and our cellar bar is full of replica tin signs, mirrors, and postcards of posters from that marvellous age of advertising.

And, coming more up to date, YouTube itself is packed with compilations of TV ads from the 70s and 80s, some of which are already being hailed as works of art.

Perhaps, in the future, we'll be seeing exhibitions of branded apps turned art.