First Blog Post: Nick Moscardelli

It’s interesting to see how much can influence people on a daily basis. Ideas are constantly manipulated and their origin is never truly clear; however, the environment that a person may come from can vastly change their perspective. Similarly, that same environment can influence the true “originality” of their ideas as well. Over the course of the few College Writing classes, we have discussed both how ideas can change over time and the ways in which information to create said ideas can be gathered. The two main works that we have examined and discussed are the documentary “Everything is a Remix” and “Sponsors of Literacy” by Deborah Brandt. When we watched “Everything is a Remix”, we discussed how ideas may never truly be original but actually modifications of previous ones. The documentary showed examples in many different areas ranging from rap music to the development of personal computers, with each demonstrating how newer innovations came from, and sometimes even stolen from, prior technology or ideas. Our class then transitioned into a discussion on whether or not originality was real, or if there is no such thing as a truly creative idea. We also talked about the thin line between copying and homage, as well as how difficult it is to claim official ownership of an idea. Especially when dealing with software and more conceptual ideas, it is very hard to fully explain what it is that someone will be trying to claim, so stating that idea in as general terms as possible is a common solution to cover as much ground as possible. Nevertheless, the evolution of ideas based on previous ones is not necessarily a bad thing. In biological terms, it’s simply “descent with modification”, or evolving ideas that take traits from one or more previous concepts and are eventually molded into something different. When the work being done is for a good cause, or maybe simply created out of good fun, using another individual’s or group’s ideas could be overall beneficial in the long run. Similarly, we discussed “Sponsors of Literacy” in class this week, an article/essay that describes how people have access to various tools and ideas that influence how they obtain a body of knowledge. After highlighting some of the major concepts in this work, the class transitioned into a conversation about our individual sponsors of literacy and how they have affected our lives. Some examples given were parents, coaches, teachers, computers, cell phones, and to a much higher degree of influence than I personally realized, social media. What I found interesting about this discussion was how it relates back to “Everything is a Remix”. The sponsors of literacy that we find in our everyday lives provide us with many different kinds of information, beyond simply words on a page in a book. They influence how we think and act in society, and as we grow older, we become more conscious of the ideas we choose to follow and reject, further building our opinions and perspectives that we carry on through life and potentially share. However, these sponsors of literacy may be the same sources of information that we mentally “remix” in such a way to create and implement our own new and creative ideas. People have to base their existing knowledge on some prior information, and to a certain extent I believe there is only so much originality that comes from morphing and building upon ideas that have already been taught in the past. Nevertheless, I still find it very interesting that ideas from one source to another so quickly that these numerous influences in our lives contribute to almost every thought and action that we complete each day, no matter how insignificant or unrelated it may seem.