Building on the Work of Others as an Integral Part of Originality - Essay Example

Building on the Work of Others as an Integral Part of Originality Some people have a very wrong idea of what the word “original” means. They think it is just about something being new and different, and that if something is based off of something else that has already been done, then it is not original enough to be called original. This is wrong. It would be completely stupid for someone not to use the things that are already around them when they try to create something new – doing so would simply make no sense at all, not even a little bit. So while it may not be possible to truly create a definition of original that fits every single case, it is important to note that any definition of original has to include the idea of building off of the works of others. Perhaps this definition could be something like “builds off of previous works in the field to make something new in some important way.” The reason creating a definition of original has to focus around using other people’s ideas is that using someone else’s ideas *has* to be part of creating anything new. Otherwise creation will just be a constant process of reinventing the wheel. This is a problem in several important ways. Firstly, creating something new, that is not based off of someone else’s ideas, takes a lot more time and effort – imagine what the world would be like if every single person who wanted to use a computer had to invent their own language for programming it, their own operating systems and so on. So the process of progress, of creating new thing has to use other people’s ideas to save on time and energy, and actually have time to do something new or original with it. Without this time saving it would be nearly impossible to actually spend any time on true invention. Not only does creating something from scratch take a great deal more time than using other people’s ideas and building off of them, but it also actually helps promote original things (that is, things that look different or operate differently from what came before them). If someone was trying to design a car, for instance, without ever having looked at a car before, they would probably create something that looked a great deal like early automobiles, because those were simple and natural designs. But if someone were to look at cutting edge designs like a 2012 Porsche or Cadillac, use those as a starting point, and then move forward by adding or subtracting features, streamlining here or making more elegant there, then the work would look different than what came before. Even in cases where something appears completely novel, unlike anything that came before it, that design implicitly shows that the designer has looked at previous designs in order to make his or hers completely different. So the most off the wall, crazy design still inherently references more traditional works. In writing it is especially important to make reference to previous work. This is not only because otherwise simply be re-inventing the wheel, thought that is definitely true. The other reason is that “texts not only refer but in fact contain other texts” (Porter 36). In this quotation Porter means that when you make reference to another text, sometimes even to a small degree, you in fact contain all of the information in that text in your text as well (a concept known as intertextuality). This concept is incredibly important because it allows a writer to access and communicate extraordinarily complex ideas in a few words of reference. Because of genius thinkers of the past, we do not have to re-hash everything every-thing. If every time an author wanted to talk about Orientalism they would have to dissect it with the depth and astuteness of Edward Said, then there would be no room in their works to move past it. But now, because Said did all of that work, it is possible to simply say the word “Orientalism” and you have the entire work that he had done to explain what it means, through the magic of intertextuality. So your text contains hundreds or thousands of pages of ideas simply through referencing other authors. This allows one to build and make new ideas, without having to write the hundreds or thousands of pages that other authors already have. It allows one to build on the works of others in an important way. Another good example of the idea of building off of others work can be seen in one of the most popular product right now, the iPhone. The iPhone did not do anything that was truly “new,” if you want to use the strictest definition of that word. Other phones could connect to the internet. Other phones had touch screens. Other phones could store and play music and videos. Other phones could make calls. Other phones had applications, and app stores. But what Apple did was recombine these features in a new and original way. Had they been trying to simply invent a new type of phone, their work would certainly have been much less original and much less useful. So some of the most successful and original products were produced using this definition of original, that is, building off of what others do but using it well and creating something somewhat new and important. Any focus on creating something completely new or completely unique is obviously a bad idea, and a big problem that will not actually lead to originality. It involves not only wasting a great deal of time and effort in re-hashing work that was already done, but also creates ideas or things that bear a strong similarity to things that have come before them. In order to make something that is truly new, it is important to know what came before, in order to use it or avoid using it. So originality means building on the works of others in new and important ways. Works Cited Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discourse of Community Author(s)” Rhetoric Review Vol 5 Iss. 1. 1986. Read More