I have given a summer course with the theme openness on Internet now for three summers in a row. It is fun. The students produce excellent work and I always meet interesting views on both old and new topics. This year we replaced Lessig’s earlier book Code with the slight newer one Remix. Today, I stumbled on this talk on Remix by Kirby Fergusson, who produced a series of four short episodes on the on the topic Everything is a remix. One of his arguments is that the elements of Remix, i.e. copy, transform and combine, is the core elements of creativity. Both his talk and his series provide a lot of interesting and striking examples of creative work, or to quote, ”We are not self-made. We are dependent on one another. Admitting this to ourselves isn’t an embrace of mediocrity and derivativeness, it’s a liberation from our misconceptions”. It is well worth a watch.
