Is There Still Any Original Content Out There?
We’ve come to a point where it’s really, really difficult to come up with anything that’s totally original. It seems the Internet has made information easily accessible at a moment’s notice, and this has made us lazy. At least that’s what some people in the academe think.
A new study looking at “personal essays” written for university admission supports this theory by pointing out repeated examples of plagiarism, where applicants pretty clearly took “personal essays” that were from certain websites and used the ideas and personal experiences in them as their own. One of the most popular, apparently, was an essay about a fascination for chemistry that began with the applicant setting fire to his or her pajamas at age 8. Apparently, that particular scenario happened to 234 individuals… Or, more likely, just one of them, and the rest took the idea from the fact that the essay was posted to a site showing “successful” personal statements. Most of the essays weren’t plagiarized directly—they just built on the idea. -Techdirt
Imagine, an essay on personal experiences, and hundreds of people would share a single particular scenario. Of course, while this might not necessarily be downright plagiarism, this is a sign that a good number of students have gone to building on other people’s work instead of doing something more creative and original.
Granted, there’s probably no truly original idea anymore these days. Hey, even we bloggers are fond of building on other people’s work, sometimes adding our own two or three lines of opinion and commentary. But there are only those certain times when this is acceptable. And copy other people’s personal experiences as one’s own doesn’t count.
But then some people would rather take a more positive approach.
Jeremy Wagstaff … suggests that perhaps many of the applicants don’t think of it as “plagiarism” but more like wiki-style collaboration. That is, they’ve grown up in an age of internet collaboration where no one person “owns” the content, but that content is an ongoing process of ideas that anyone can participate in. In such a world, the idea of “plagiarism” has little meaning.
The same innovations that have made us lazy are in fact also making us collectively more creative. So since I’m too lazy to create something entirely new, I get help from my peers and build on each other’s work. It’s like asking neighbors for help when building a house. You can only work so fast, and you probably have a limited knowledge of architecture, carpentry, and interior design (and even plumbing!). But if everyone pitches in and builds on ideas contributed by everyone else, you’d have something done by day’s end.
Is there still any original content out there?
Or perhaps the question should be, has there ever been any truly original content not inspired or influenced by other works, in the first place?
What do you think?