Authenticity
With the introduction of the camera, film, CGI, and much more advanced mechanisms/tools into the realm of art, as well as elsewhere, our era has ushered in a degree of reproducibility (of objects) beyond which previous eras were undoubtedly unable to surpass. Whereas, you would have required Da Vinci's permission to view the Mona Lisa circa. 1504, that 'same' painting pops up on screens, appears on shirts, and hangs over fireplaces all around the globe these days. While, as Taussig would have it, this may lead to the rejuvenation our mimetic faculties (Taussig 21), isn't there something lost in the process of reproduction? Are all the copies of the Mona Lisa today the equivalent of the original?
Perhaps not. Walter Benjamin defines the authenticity of an object as the '...essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced.' This definition renders any reproduction of an original inauthentic in the sense that it cannot inhabit the definite interval of time, or location that characterize the original.
But why attach so much importance to these two things? Time and space? In fact, it seems the trend in technological advancement is to eradicate these two 'constraints', judging by the popularity of social networks and other components of the physically inaccessible cyberworld. However the two factors play a strong role in determining the contextual connotation of the object, which for the reproduction, could vary from that of the original.
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