Originality, Plagiarism, and the art of the Remix

This article from the New York Times:

The Free-Appropriation Writer



To what extent should writers, thinkers be responsible for creating original material? I think this discussion has implications for our field(s):

"After a blogger and fellow novelist announced that Ms. Hegemann had blended sizeable chunks of his own writing into hers, Ms. Hegemann, instead of following the plagiarism-gotcha script of contrition and retraction so familiar in recent years, announced that appropriating the passages from that book and other sources was her plan all along.

A child of a media-saturated generation, she presented herself as a writer whose birthright is the remix, the use of anything at hand she feels suits her purposes, an idea of communal creativity that certainly wasn’t shared by those from whom she borrowed. In a line that might have been stolen from Sartre (it wasn’t) she added: 'There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.'"

Google Buzz

Stung by critics, Google alters Buzz - Boston Globe, 2/15/10

I'm glad to see this article today in the Boston Globe. My response to Google Buzz during its first week is summed up in my Facebook the day Buzz showed up on my Gmail page:

Is anyone else feeling sort of 'raped' by social media? Apparently I don't have a choice about joining Google Buzz. It's already there, I'm already being 'followed' and am involuntarily 'following' others. Rape is defined as "forced, manipulated, or coerced (social media) contact by a stranger, friend or acquaintance. ... It is an act of aggression and power combined with some form of (social media)."

What I find astonishing is that a company like Google did not anticipate this kind of reaction when they designed this product. Responses among my friends ranged from "why do we need another Facebook" to being horrified that who we were following and being followed by was not optional for the user, but chosen by Google! Whose brilliant idea was that?!

Did they do any test marketing of this product or were they so desperate to create their own social networking function that they decided it was best to force relationships on their users? I'm quite sure this flaw would have become evident in even the smallest of focus groups. The result, for this victim of Buzz, is that the effort now just seems pathetic and unoriginal to me. That said, Buzz turned me off to the point that I have not explored all it offers. Maybe someone can tell me if it serves any purpose not already offered by Facebook?