first post of a new year

I realize that 95% of material posted on the internet is probably just reposts of material that is already there. What I'm less sure about is if this a problem. Three aspects/properties of the internet make me feel that this lack of creativity (I'm using the word in the sense of development of original content - not as a judgment of the value of the information being repurposed) may not only be a detriment, but may actually be a good thing:

1. The Internet is really big. There is already tons of original content out there. And every day, people are still generating tons more; more than I or anyone can read/use. Every once and a while I think of a clever thought  or come up with a great example through the blind squirrel principle. These thoughts, while clever, are not usually that original - so it's nice that I don't have to invent the wheel and rewrite the thought but can just "borrow" the description from another source (just be careful not to try to take credit for someone else's work!)

2. And it's only getting bigger. We're not going to run out of space (although in theory, we've run out of IP addresses for domain names or something last year). So re-posting stuff that already exists out there isn't going to fill the thing. It just makes a messy closet a tiny bit messier.

3. So how do I find anything? Even if it only contained original content, there would be too much stuff to slog through. Therefore, one of the beauties of people reposting the good stuff is that it actually acts sort of like an aggregation agent. If more copies of the best stuff exist, you are more likely to stumble across the good stuff - especially if there are places that collect information that is more likely to relate to what you need.

So now I'm going to post a link to an article about aggregation, the internet, and creativity. I think it's a great place to start to see how the ideas in Cognitive Surplus can relate to all sorts of issues. In this article from the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Rob Walker discusses a website called Kickstarter. Prepare to discuss this in class (and think of other, similar crowd-sourced websites...).