With our inclination to ‘share’ things – apparently because we care – there isn’t a need, a push or any form of motivation to write, compose, design or come up with original ideas anymore. Why change something that works, right?
Today we see students and academicians rely heavily on Wikipedia to do research, blogs copying and feeding off other blogs, memes and rage comics rehashing old jokes that have been around since the birth of the Internet and Youtube filled with song covers by eager (yet still very talented) youngsters.
If you don’t think this ‘sharing is caring’ nature is serious enough to be worth your time, get this: not only was 2012 hailed as the year of the sequel, there are (more than) 95 movie sequels in the works and at least 50 movies that are going to be given a remake. And that is just the movie industry. We see the same problem in music (covers and mash-ups) and books (see originality of Hunger Games). This begs the question: are we running out of new ideas?
If we are, this and the fact that Credit seems to mean nothing on the Web may prove Edward de Bono’s quote true.