I get your point about disappearing art being reproducible, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the role art has played for humans throughout our existence.

I get your point about disappearing art being reproducible, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the role art has played for humans throughout our existence. Not only does art greatly enhances the enjoyment of life, it's been a critically important survival tool throughout human history and pre-history. Even for primitive humans, art was used to help record and offload and pass on critical information through stories, waypoints/maps, and artworks. Our appreciation for beautiful forms, structures, rhythms, etc, is an evolutionary adaptation that helps us arouse interest and fascination with our world, inspiring us on to greater things and ultimately increasing our survival. This is why our appreciation of natural beauty and art is universal across cultures and time. Many have written and talked about these ideas. STEM doesn't happen without art. Technology, on the other hand, has put us and our planet on the brink of extinction. Obviously we are now 'all in' on STEM for the survival of modern civilization, but there are a lot of people living in the world today who may disagree about the fruits of progress.