Are we all geniuses or are we simply plagiarising others work?

We all consume tonnes of material on a daily basis and the thought for this blog is to flesh out whether it is actually possible to create new work or is it just a case of really rearranging and reorganising stuff we consume and communicating it in a different way?

Communicating it through different minds and different channels.

Reading for me is a new favourite past time as it helps me with ideas and creative thought for my writing among other things. I also consume tonnes of podcast audio, probably 2 hours a day or more, which I absorb heaps of content from.

We all in someway absorb & consume content, we read newspapers, listen to music, and watch YouTube channels and online media, attend seminars, read blogs, listen to the radio, listen to podcasts and even get inspired visually from viewing others works.

The more I read and learn the more knowledge I have which directly feeds my creative output.

Some argue that the work they produce is their own, but is it really?

I suppose for the purpose of my blog the work is 100% my own work however the ideas and knowledge on topics have been taken and adapted from other sources. I haven’t simply just created them from scratch.

There is a level of what we consume and how well we recreate it. It is one thing to simply copy and paste someone else’s work and another to actually take ideas, knowledge and experience and create something new.

Have you ever listened to a song on the radio and it just sounded so familiar, like one of your old favourites? It has happened and people take serious legal action. I suppose there are only so many strings on a guitar that at some point some jingles and melodies are going to cross over.

I read several really great blogs online and they have really thick and great content. Some are heavily researched and experienced before being created and shared, others are more so artistic and re-created from what I am sure is the material they consume.

Many of the highly successful have been accused of copying others ideas. Steve Jobs, the man of apple, has been noted for being one to copy an idea and duplicate it but just making it better in the process.

This is what I feel is great about the world today we have the ability to share ideas and make things better. The Japanese are incredible at this process, they have they ability to take ideas and things from other worlds and master them.

Some of the best cuisine in the world in remastered by the Japanese, they are particular good at Italian dishes and even hamburgers. They are by no means the same dishes you would expect but stolen and re-created in their own style.

They also stole the car from America and now produce some of the best cars in the world. I have even heard that the Italian stole pasta from the Chinese noodle.

So the question is are we stealing ideas or simply taking a share of many ideas and reproducing something that is better or just shared to a different audience in different light.

I would argue that it is the later.

Seth Godin, serial entrepreneur, is happy for people to copy his ideas as long as they make it better. He says using a great metaphor that “no one is hunting but rather we are all farming and cross pollination helps everyone.”

TED talks started with Richard Wurman, the creator, noticing that ideas in the fields of technology, entertainment and design were growing and were certainly ‘ideas worth sharing’, that would be a great slogan. TED when launched in 2006 went viral.

I would suggest that we can create new material but in the process we all consume other ideas that help produce more content to give back to the wider world.

Plagiarising is not favourable and the process of simply coping another idea lacks credibility and would not be sustainable. Nor would simply reproducing someone else work help continue to evolve our race.

The pace of technology, medicine and science advances in the last century have come a long way and we seem to be speeding up with how quickly we advance. I would have to say this is largely due to borrowing, sharing and the creating of new ideas.

So consume, cross-pollinate, mutate, discover, recreate and share. We must always share for things to improve.