thank you, I so needed that metaphor! Evergreen. That's the term I've been looking for for tons of things. Indeed, there's no need for more Sesame Street — AND

thank you, I so needed that metaphor! Evergreen. That's the term I've been looking for for tons of things. Indeed, there's no need for more Sesame Street — AND because kids can and should watch the best of the best of kids stuff already out there, there's no need for new versions of most ANY kids shows and so on. The library already has more good kids books than any kid needs. Why make more? I'm not being sarcastic. I can think of a few reasons: - new subjects like tensions around social media or parental-addiction-to-phones or global warming - new stuff that fills missing gaps in the representation of different cultures and perspectives But mostly, why not just FIX outdated stuff too! When it comes to books, if only 30 year old stuff were public domain instead of absurd copyright terms, we could take all sorts of great things and just clean up outdated racial or sexist elements or update the context etc. The MAIN reason to make new stuff is for the creative process itself, but we don't need it to get most of the attention. By pure numbers, the best 50 books of the year 2019 will be mostly worse compared to the best 50 books of all of the 20th century. But there's economic drive for constant infinite growth, and this is the cultural version of it. Cultural artificial obsolescence (or really just the false pretense of obsolescence).