I blame the pernicious influences of Romanticism and marketing over our culture for this obsession with the idea of originality being a state of total divorce from anything prior. So much rugged individualist silliness.
Out of the tapestry of ideas that has been continuously woven since even before we became Sapiens, any ideas could be repeated any number of times, but they're always going to be housed inside minds that are dynamically generating meaning and connection based on different life experiences. I'd argue that interesting ideas or interesting objects arise out of that distributed choral harmony of brains working over shared, related ideas -- not from one guy banging out a single note louder than anyone else and becoming "original" in a sense related to "the marketplace needs a new product to sell which feels novel." Especially if we're discussing the arts or design -- even if you set out to draw influence from the past, it's not as if you'd be able to avoid stamping it with the present. I don't buy either of the two ideas -- it's impossible to be purely original, Athena-from-the-forehead style, and it's impossible to be purely unoriginal. No two photocopies off even a machine are identical. You could say "hi" to me and it would be a part of a completely unique day that no other being, besides me, will ever subjectively experience outside of me having my day, right now. That seems plenty original to me.
The way innovation and replication happen are features, not bugs!
p.s. If I overstate this, it's only because I've seen/read/spoken to plenty of aspiring artsy people who tear themselves up over this idea and get completely demoralized. I think they are barking up the wrong tree.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited March 2009
Originality worthless without application.
Actually, the concept of it is worthless, period, since the very idea of originality tends to be subjective.
Actually, the concept of it is worthless, period, since the very idea of originality tends to be subjective.
I think it's fine when used in a strictly personal and positive sense. It only becomes a problem when people torture themselves or others about their 'lack of originality'.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Actually, the concept of it is worthless, period, since the very idea of originality tends to be subjective.
I think it's fine when used in a strictly personal and positive sense. It only becomes a problem when people torture themselves or others about their 'lack of originality'.
Oi yeah. Especially those in the music and art fields.
And also, I think nothing is original thanks to the deep web. There's like 7500 tb of data (or some ridiculous number) there. Every single number strain imaginable is probably located there.
While I'm not at all unhappy with my life or the way it's going, I do feel that it makes me less of an individual if I can't do something different.
Have you ever written something, and then re-read it and realised how much of the influence behind it glares you in the face?
I imagine that happens to even the people we consider to be original. Creativity has also been a summation of works, not inifinite new and original ideas.
I would argue that, by any meaningful definition of originality, there is more original thought happening now than at any previous period in history, and it will continue to increase.
No thought exists in isolation, no concept is just conjured up out of nowhere. To come up with long multiplication, you need to represent numbers with digits in a base - to come up with a theory of gravity, you need laws of motion. These concepts are quite clearly original, but also quite clearly derivative. Here we need to distinguish between derivative and wholly derivative - work which builds on previous work is not, by necessity, unoriginal.
I could accept that, for example, you didn't consider Buffy the Vampire Slayer original because it's just a genre piece, but to argue it's not original because it's composed of 45-minute episodes arranged in seasons of 23 episodes is disingenuous. Or to say Katamari Damacy is unoriginal because it uses the analog sticks to move. Or to say Shakespeare was unoriginal because he used the English language. Everything new is based in part on something that came before, and originality is in what you add, not in what you don't carry over from other works. Sure, it's possible to describe something as a "totally original idea", but that's when you isolate the one original concept which, almost without exception, relies on a huge body of prior work.
On that basis, the more prior work we have, the more possibilities we have for building on it. In terms of technology - Dyson may have been able to invent his vacuum cleaner had prior vacuum cleaners not existed, but he wouldn't have been able to without electricity and plastic moulding technology; Braid could arguably have been written 20 years ago on an Amiga, but GTAIV couldn't . And in terms of prior work - without the Greek plays, could Shakespeare's work have existed? Without Tolkien, could Discworld exist? Without Newton's gravitation, could we have the theory of relativity?
As long as we don't get too hung up on some artificial notion of originality that requires distancing yourself from your influences and inspiration, you can see there's plenty of originality happening all the time, and the potential to be original increases as the fields available to work in (and their sophistication) increases.
There is, of course, the separate issue that original thought is not valued as highly as some other aspects of work (and is, in and of itself, not inherently valuable - what makes original solutions valuable isn't that they're original, but that they're solutions)... but that's a completely separate idea.
From a logical standpoint the birth of an idea requires what things? Well this is mostly conjecture so take it as you will.
Frame of reference, be it observation or internal monologue thought can extend from internal and external forces. Luckily because of this the fact that the world is different now than it was 10 years ago or 50 years ago is good for originality because it shakes up the frame of reference, where geniuses in radios were born in the 1920's through the 60's geniuses in computers were born in the 70's through today. Obviously a genius in computers couldn't have existed before computers did.
Connection, to create an idea you need to connect two things together, be it the wind blows and the propeller spins or that a semiconductor only conducts part of the time. You must create a connection to create an idea. Obviously people who don't know anything about chemistry couldn't know that a semiconductor conducts some of the time, it took someone who connected semiconduction to a useful application such as computers to know a little about both.
The scientific method actually gives you a good reference for creating new ideas when you understand that.
Problem - you need to go faster
background - gasoline explodes when aerosoled
hypothesis - if used in a properly chambered machine as a fuel to move pistons the piston energy can be transfered into mechanical energy
Solution - internal combustion engine
The world currently lacks great multi-disciplined scholars, i.e scholars who aren't specialists in one field but many fields to make overarching observations and connections to bridge the schools of thought. The world we live in today requires technology from nearly every discipline to work and it's not the super scientists who build a computer it's the garage nerds with too much time on their hands. Many a invention have probably been the inspiration of a inebriated night when one man wondered what would happen if he did something in an alternate way. Many a invention have further been created when two great minds of different fields sat down together, often a problem one is working on is a problem another already solved. Thus the nature of ideas and invention. There are an infinite number of ways that the environment can be arranged and there's an infinite number of ways a person could turn out, therefore there are an infinite number of thoughts that can be constructed. All a specialist can do is what he specializes in, if he's a cancer specialist he'll see cancer in everything, if he's a steam specialist he'll fix everything with steam, if he's a water wheel specialist he'll power everything with running water etc etc. It takes a true genius to realize water not only can run, or expand but fuse and create infinite power for the world.
I'd suspect the age of electricity and chemistry are coming to a close and the age of digital information and biology are becoming the new front runner technologies piggy backing off the last age's discoveries.
So is it possible to have an original idea? Absolutely, every post you type is probably an original idea in the fact that it'd be difficult to find another post even a paragraph long that's the exactly same. Is it possible to make an original invention? Again yes, because there's a solution to every problem in a number of places.
edit: as far as existential break downs are concerned have you ever perused the absurdist philosophy? A very neat philosophy on life that gives meaning to life in a wholly humanistic and a mostly scientific way.
elfdude on
Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
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Out of the tapestry of ideas that has been continuously woven since even before we became Sapiens, any ideas could be repeated any number of times, but they're always going to be housed inside minds that are dynamically generating meaning and connection based on different life experiences. I'd argue that interesting ideas or interesting objects arise out of that distributed choral harmony of brains working over shared, related ideas -- not from one guy banging out a single note louder than anyone else and becoming "original" in a sense related to "the marketplace needs a new product to sell which feels novel." Especially if we're discussing the arts or design -- even if you set out to draw influence from the past, it's not as if you'd be able to avoid stamping it with the present. I don't buy either of the two ideas -- it's impossible to be purely original, Athena-from-the-forehead style, and it's impossible to be purely unoriginal. No two photocopies off even a machine are identical. You could say "hi" to me and it would be a part of a completely unique day that no other being, besides me, will ever subjectively experience outside of me having my day, right now. That seems plenty original to me.
The way innovation and replication happen are features, not bugs!
p.s. If I overstate this, it's only because I've seen/read/spoken to plenty of aspiring artsy people who tear themselves up over this idea and get completely demoralized. I think they are barking up the wrong tree.
Actually, the concept of it is worthless, period, since the very idea of originality tends to be subjective.
this post has been done before
I think it's fine when used in a strictly personal and positive sense. It only becomes a problem when people torture themselves or others about their 'lack of originality'.
Oi yeah. Especially those in the music and art fields.
And also, I think nothing is original thanks to the deep web. There's like 7500 tb of data (or some ridiculous number) there. Every single number strain imaginable is probably located there.
Have you ever written something, and then re-read it and realised how much of the influence behind it glares you in the face?
I imagine that happens to even the people we consider to be original. Creativity has also been a summation of works, not inifinite new and original ideas.
Oddly enough that is my middle name.
No thought exists in isolation, no concept is just conjured up out of nowhere. To come up with long multiplication, you need to represent numbers with digits in a base - to come up with a theory of gravity, you need laws of motion. These concepts are quite clearly original, but also quite clearly derivative. Here we need to distinguish between derivative and wholly derivative - work which builds on previous work is not, by necessity, unoriginal.
I could accept that, for example, you didn't consider Buffy the Vampire Slayer original because it's just a genre piece, but to argue it's not original because it's composed of 45-minute episodes arranged in seasons of 23 episodes is disingenuous. Or to say Katamari Damacy is unoriginal because it uses the analog sticks to move. Or to say Shakespeare was unoriginal because he used the English language. Everything new is based in part on something that came before, and originality is in what you add, not in what you don't carry over from other works. Sure, it's possible to describe something as a "totally original idea", but that's when you isolate the one original concept which, almost without exception, relies on a huge body of prior work.
On that basis, the more prior work we have, the more possibilities we have for building on it. In terms of technology - Dyson may have been able to invent his vacuum cleaner had prior vacuum cleaners not existed, but he wouldn't have been able to without electricity and plastic moulding technology; Braid could arguably have been written 20 years ago on an Amiga, but GTAIV couldn't . And in terms of prior work - without the Greek plays, could Shakespeare's work have existed? Without Tolkien, could Discworld exist? Without Newton's gravitation, could we have the theory of relativity?
As long as we don't get too hung up on some artificial notion of originality that requires distancing yourself from your influences and inspiration, you can see there's plenty of originality happening all the time, and the potential to be original increases as the fields available to work in (and their sophistication) increases.
There is, of course, the separate issue that original thought is not valued as highly as some other aspects of work (and is, in and of itself, not inherently valuable - what makes original solutions valuable isn't that they're original, but that they're solutions)... but that's a completely separate idea.
or maybe those knox claymations
i dunno, there's clearly a lot left to do, otherwise we'd be quite bored
Frame of reference, be it observation or internal monologue thought can extend from internal and external forces. Luckily because of this the fact that the world is different now than it was 10 years ago or 50 years ago is good for originality because it shakes up the frame of reference, where geniuses in radios were born in the 1920's through the 60's geniuses in computers were born in the 70's through today. Obviously a genius in computers couldn't have existed before computers did.
Connection, to create an idea you need to connect two things together, be it the wind blows and the propeller spins or that a semiconductor only conducts part of the time. You must create a connection to create an idea. Obviously people who don't know anything about chemistry couldn't know that a semiconductor conducts some of the time, it took someone who connected semiconduction to a useful application such as computers to know a little about both.
The scientific method actually gives you a good reference for creating new ideas when you understand that.
Problem - you need to go faster
background - gasoline explodes when aerosoled
hypothesis - if used in a properly chambered machine as a fuel to move pistons the piston energy can be transfered into mechanical energy
Solution - internal combustion engine
The world currently lacks great multi-disciplined scholars, i.e scholars who aren't specialists in one field but many fields to make overarching observations and connections to bridge the schools of thought. The world we live in today requires technology from nearly every discipline to work and it's not the super scientists who build a computer it's the garage nerds with too much time on their hands. Many a invention have probably been the inspiration of a inebriated night when one man wondered what would happen if he did something in an alternate way. Many a invention have further been created when two great minds of different fields sat down together, often a problem one is working on is a problem another already solved. Thus the nature of ideas and invention. There are an infinite number of ways that the environment can be arranged and there's an infinite number of ways a person could turn out, therefore there are an infinite number of thoughts that can be constructed. All a specialist can do is what he specializes in, if he's a cancer specialist he'll see cancer in everything, if he's a steam specialist he'll fix everything with steam, if he's a water wheel specialist he'll power everything with running water etc etc. It takes a true genius to realize water not only can run, or expand but fuse and create infinite power for the world.
I'd suspect the age of electricity and chemistry are coming to a close and the age of digital information and biology are becoming the new front runner technologies piggy backing off the last age's discoveries.
So is it possible to have an original idea? Absolutely, every post you type is probably an original idea in the fact that it'd be difficult to find another post even a paragraph long that's the exactly same. Is it possible to make an original invention? Again yes, because there's a solution to every problem in a number of places.
edit: as far as existential break downs are concerned have you ever perused the absurdist philosophy? A very neat philosophy on life that gives meaning to life in a wholly humanistic and a mostly scientific way.