Originality
I am always on the lookout for tools that will increase my productivity and efficiency. It occurred to me recently to hunt for an application that could be used for brainstorming and mind mapping in such a way as to allow associating detailed notes and documents with ideas. Much to my delight, I discovered Heptabase.
That success led me to search for an even more specific tool, one that would create workflow charts with hyperlinks to documents describing specific tasks, procedures, and policies. It did not take long to find that Whimsical could do this.
(What I really want is one software application that offers all the productivity tools I need. I'm pretty sure there isn't one. There is a good reason to think there never will be. What I find useful is not likely to meet the needs of a sufficiently large segment of the population to make it a profitable undertaking for software developers.)
This essay is not about software or productivity or efficiency. Instead, my recent experience looking for new tools caused me to think about the nature of originality.
These recent discoveries reinforce the impression I have gained from prior searches for tools, information, hacks, and the like. I am not the first one to think about needing any of the things for which I have gone looking.
This should come as no surprise. In a world with eight billion people, the likelihood that I would originate any specific idea before everyone else must be infinitesimally small. There is a very good reason to think so. We occupy the same planet with access to similar experiences and information. We are all making connections between the bits of knowledge that many people share. It is the nature of human society that gives rise to this.
The two software applications I mentioned above, and many more besides, provide a means of illustrating the way the mind works. They show the links between ideas. Like our brains, they connect the dots.
Some might consider this essay to be an original work. It is true that the specific combination of ideas and experiences and the order of the words used to describe them has never existed before. That does not mean that this is original thinking. If I take the time to look, I suspect I will find other similar essays on the subject of originality that reaches similar conclusions as I do.
I recall being present some years ago for a PowerPoint presentation by a school superintendent in a community where I was working. At the bottom of each slide was a notification that he was asserting a copyright in his own name. I will leave aside my belief that this copyright more properly belonged to the school district that employed him, and my impression that it reflected a level of hubris that might explain his brief tenure in that position. The more significant point to make is that there was nothing particularly original in the information he presented. He was connecting dots that many other school superintendents likely connected as well.
We allow this use of the originality to describe such works. In contrast, we look askance at those who plagiarize the works of others and claim them as their own. When I worked as an adjunct professor, I had a couple of instances of catching students submitting work they had lifted from online sources. I was insulted that they thought they could so easily get away with such a ploy.
To originate an idea is more than connecting dots. It is finding dots that did not previously exist. Originality of this type must be rare indeed. The theories of relativity and natural selection were world-changing because they reflected connections invisible to the rest of us. The occasions for creation of new and unique knowledge are few and far between. Even then, these ideas build on those from the work of those who have gone. It was Sir Isaac Newton, no slouch himself in the world of ideas, who said "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Newton's work provides evidence of the rarity of original thinking. He is credited jointly with Wilhelm Leibniz for developing calculus. Both were working independently on the same topic and at the same time, building on principles developed by others. Sometimes originality comes in pairs.
The creative arts are a field in which originality is a key to the reputation of the artist. I have been intrigued for years by the reports of the riot that followed the 1913 Paris premiere of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring. There are many characteristics that one might point to distinguish it from other ballets. It is not at all clear, however, that it was its originality that caused the crowd reaction. It is a good story, though.
Artists in a range of fields build on works of others. Someone teaches them to paint, write, or compose music. There are principles and fundamentals that must be learned and practiced. These serve as the foundation for what follows. Does the artist make a conceptual leap that is distinctive? Or does he or she take the next logical step in an evolutionary process intended to help the rest of us see the world through new eyes?
There is a new challenge to our notions of originality that we are just beginning to encounter, the use of artificial intelligence. That AI can produce creative works that are unique serves to reinforce the idea that most of what is created results from the connection of ideas, information, and experiences from others. AI is incapable of the truest form of originality. Because it is trained on others' works, it is currently incapable of the conceptual leaps that Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein made. If that limitation is ever overcome, we might wish to wonder whether the dire predictions of science fiction will become reality.
Most human intelligence is like artificial intelligence in terms of its reliance on connecting dots. That doesn't mean we should give up on originality. Instead, those of us given to thinking about our place in the world and what we contribute to the future must be prepared for our own eureka moments. Darwin, Einstein, Newton, Leibniz and others were, after all, imperfect human beings like the rest of us. They were a bit smarter than average, perhaps, and maybe more curious, but not so different that we cannot all aspire to the claim of originality for our own discoveries.
Even if we are never recognized as original thinkers -- and only a tiny fraction of us ever will be -- we should not despair. Each of us offers ideas and experiences to the rest of the world and usually without limitation on how these additions to the body of human knowledge can be used. These are dots that others can connect on their way to discovering something new. We might be the giants on whose shoulders others will one day stand.