Thanks for all your replies. I'll have to dig into cullet a bit. I suppose you are correct about a culture being in constant flux. However, and perhaps I am a bit cynical here and jaded by apocalyptic issues, I am thinking of the current cultural malaise we are in. It is not so much that the culture is static, per se, but the fact that 'culture' seems to indicate something 'other'. The reference point for 'other' is anything that isn't whitebread American.

McDonaldization was a term coined a few yeares ago for the process. Example: rock and roll songs I grew up with are now used in commercials that have nothing to do with the song; in fact, the commercial, in many cases, is the antithesis of the song. Ozzy Osbourne's 'Crazy Train' (every mother's nightmare when I was a kid) used in an Oldsmobile commercial. I mean, c'mon.

Anyhow, it is this force that is grinding out homogeneity and meaningless drivel. I'm exaggerating for effect here but our buildings have no character, our ads lack any originality, our movies and songs are all remakes and all our telephone inquiries are touch tone and computerized; worse, movies are all computer animated and our songs are all done on computers. No need for instruments, no need for live actors.

Maybe there really is no term for it. But it is that drive towards efficiency and ease that is causing all of this because, in doing so, creativity has no place here. Creativity seems to be understood now in a materialistic sense as an innovation in maximizing this efficiency.

I'm not sure if that helps or not!