大象传媒

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If you were listening to Broadcasting House on Sunday you may have heard the launch of a new A History of the World feature around the final object in the series.

Have you ever taken a look at the full list of the 100 objects? If you have, then you must have spotted that the very last one, object 100, is just a question mark.

That鈥檚 because when they came up with the series, Neil MacGregor and the producers decided that if they were doing a chronological history from 2 million years BC to the present day, then the final object should be from 2010. So they left it teasingly blank.

But now the British Museum has chosen their 100th object and I can exclusively reveal that I have absolutely no idea what it is. Haven鈥檛 a clue. They won鈥檛 tell me. And not only that, I haven鈥檛 found anyone here that does know. I鈥檝e dropped some hints to my colleagues over on the British Museum website, asked them if the museum has made any new acquisitions recently, but they say they don鈥檛 know either.

All we do know is that it鈥檚: 鈥淎n object that tells the story of the ingenuity and the challenges that shape humanity in the 21st century.鈥�

Now that seems to open up a pretty broad field of thought: one object that sums up our lives right now. One single, man-made thing that we could put in a museum with the label: 鈥淲hat it was like to live in the year 2010鈥�.

Any ideas? We want to know what you think. Yes, it鈥檚 a classic 鈥榓nswers on a postcard鈥� question. Except please don鈥檛 send us a postcard. Instead we鈥檝e made a page for you to leave your ideas - or you can tweet them using #objectoftoday and we鈥檒l pick them up.

Suggestions so far include the smartphone, GPS satellites, the contraceptive pill, batteries and the vuvuzela.

Add your ideas to our object of today page. We鈥檒l also be asking people who pass through Radio 4 in the next few weeks for their ideas and add them to the page.

But who do you ask to kick off something like this? Something that requires a mind which can synthesise the vast array of human achievement and home in on the single thing that defines us in all our multifarious complexity?

You鈥檇 need some kind of 21st century Renaissance man. The kind of man who could fill the Albert Hall twice over with people straining to hear his ruminations and meanderings. A man like Stephen Fry, in fact. Happily he was on Front Row last week and we managed to grab him for 30 seconds.

What do you think? Add a comment