and now we’re left only to make collages of the work of previous generations

The title is a quote from: Plagiarism lines blur for students in digital age

I'm reminded of Issac Asimov's Foundation series as well as Arthur C. Clark's Childhood's End, in that both books have a theme of what happens to the human creative spirit when no creative work ever dies.

What happens to musicians when no musical work will ever be forgotten or lost, and our total human collection of excellent high quality music starts to exceed what we could ever listen to, even given a whole lifetime? Who would have the courage to write new music?

And who also finds the courage and confidence to write new opinions and analysis of knowledge, when hundreds of brilliant people have already thoroughly tackled the topic, and we realize that we can't offer any more time, dedication or intelligence than has already been expended on the task?

“There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.” Says one author quoted in the article, who was discovered to have copied passages for her book. Don't we have a saying that 'Good artists copy, great artists steal?' Only now, with digital preservation and searching, is it quite so obvious and transparent.

There is little so thrilling to the human spirit as the act of creating something new. But how we define 'new' against the context of everything ever made before? If nothing is ever lost or forgotten, and everything can easily be found again, won't the human race exhaust original expressions of a particular creative form or idea?

If we are seeing these attitudes about creating and copying now, after only decades of digital preservation, what about in ten thousand more years of cultural accumulation?