I enjoyed watching Kirby Ferguson’s TED talk about “How Remix Culture Fuels Creativity and Invention.” It really made me think that nothing is really original. Aren’t we all just building on the ideas of others who preceded us? As Mark Twain said, “All ideas are secondhand.”
A “recycling” of ideas occurs all the time in literature. When I read Shakespeare’s Hamlet with seniors, they see the parallels with Disney’s The Lion King. (Of course, they suggest that we just watch The Lion King instead!). We watch West Side Story when we read Romeo and Juliet. If you really think about it, all of literature can be reduced to a limited number of plots and themes which are retold in a variety of ways.
Ferguson’s definition of creativity as “copy, transform, combine” is interesting. We really are dependent on the ideas of others. Although I understand that individuals want to have credit (and make money from) their ideas and inventions, as Ferguson suggested, maybe we need to take a look at the way creative works are viewed as property under the law. Building on the ideas of others is how we advance as a society.
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