Nothing new under the sun

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 1:9
"In a hunting society, children play with bows and arrows. In an information society, children play with information" - Henry Jenkins
"Good artists borrow, great artists steal." - Pablo Picasso

What do these quotes have in common? They all represent what is happening right here, right now, on the web. According to Kirby Ferguson, 'Everything is a Remix', or in other words (see what I did there?) just about everything you encounter online or in popular culture has either been done before, or it's a synthesis (the social media term is 'mashup') of previously available content. The nature of the Social Web is such that tools are available  to repurpose, rip, mash, combine and otherwise manipulate just about any content into any other format you wish. The philosophy and processes behind this movement are compellingly explained and elaborated upon by Ferguson in a series of four short videos, the first of which is embedded below:


Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Part 2 looks at remix techniques in movie making
Part 3 explores how innovation happens
Part 4 covers the legal and ethical implications.

View all four videos and then ask yourself some questions - are current copyright laws adequate enough to cope with the new and emerging practices we see every day on the Web? Are we seeing evidence for the end of creativity, or a new kind of artistry? Is there a derivative nature to creativity as Ferguson claims? What does this mean for originality and for the future of self expression? And what are the implications for education?

Photo from Wikimedia Commons


Nothing new under the sun by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.