the future of ideas: innovation vs. originality?

The Future of Ideas

Lawrence Lessig

2001

During his final Tonight Show week, Conan O’Brien made a point to

“waste” NBC’s money with a series of gags designed to be expensive as

possible for no reason. in Conan’s final episode, the band welcomed

Tom Hanks to the stage by playing The Beatles’ “Lovely Rita” a song which costs $500,000 to cover on-

air.

Artwork Example (Must be original to use in film)

Internet - shouldn’t be, but becoming limited by same sort

of legal constraints

Before copyright laws, creativity seen as natural

process of taking something and reforming it into

something “ever so slightly new”

Cimabue or Benvenuto di Giuseppe

Madonna Enthroned with Angels and Profits,1285 or 1286, Florence

Pietro Cavallinni, The Last Judgement,1293, Rome

Giotto, (1266–1337), Cimabue's apprentice

figures based on observation of life, three-dimensional; have visible emotions.

Giotto The

Lamentation 1305,

Florence

Rip - Mix - Burn or Copy - Reform - Publish

Jazz music -- sampling• Charlie Parker - sax

• Quoted Stravinski Firebird Suite

Free

Resources

Controlled Resources

Libre - free speech

Gratis - free beer

• Availability of free resources has been central to progress in science and the arts

Example of Science

He colludes that one of the main reasons this problem of the Internet being limited is due to our acceptance of control - some is good, so

more must be better?

But according to Ian Anderson in “Post-Digital Aesthetics and the Return to Modernism”, we are

beginning to prize originality and uniqueness more, in response to the

perfect reproduction of the digital age/aesthetic

Piet Modrian, Composition 8

(Compositie 8), 1914 Guggenheim Museum, New

York

• Important idea is that these “pure” art works are indivual and unique, not easily reproducible

Every image and sound byte in this

presentation was copied and pasted from

the Internet.