As I was receiving my daily dose of SportsCenter earlier this week, an advertisement about a new Apple product came on the screen. The company heralded the new iPad as a revolutionary and innovative device that was completely original. That word "original" really made me think long after the commercial was over. I concluded that Apple's product was in fact not original and that it was just built upon a foundation previously set up. Soon after, I attempted to name one thing-simply one thing- that was utterly authentic. This begged the question: is anything really original?
After searching through magazine and televisions ads proclaiming new innovations, I could not find one modern-day thing that I considered completely original. Everything simply added-on to something previous. Next, I attempted to trace the origins of certain devices to one original thought from the past. This was impossible, as there seemed to be multiple ways that these products have evolved. This connects very well to our discussion in American Studies earlier this week about the importance of collaboration between people. The reason that American society progresses through time is through the combination of different ideas and thoughts. Through this process of collaboration we are able to create new and interesting things that are beneficial. Whether a children's toy or a religious ideology, these things have to be created with support from the past. Without collaboration, it is very hard to provide our society with something that it would find useful because it would have no basis for successes and failures.
Although I agree that many new products today claim to be original, when in fact the products are just improvements of other products, I believe many things are in fact original. Products like the iPad that are similar to devices such as lab tops, or even the iPhone, may not appear original because they share other ideas, but isn't it original to combine other ideas? Innovative ideas may include collaboration with other products, but it remains authentic because it was an original idea to combine those products ideas.
ReplyDeleteI agree with trevork. While the ideas have been around forever, the specific combination of products have not been used yet. Also, even though the iPad used lots of different ideas and previous inventions, I'm pretty sure that Apple had to invent a bunch of specialty technology to put into the iPad. Like bigger screens, special software, new operating systems, etc. All of that takes ingenuity and creativity. However, like Sam said, I don't think any of it could have been done without collaboration. A person will say, "Here's something cool I made in my basement! It can do this!!" And a person 1000 miles away will say, "Woah, I can make it do something different and really cool if I use it like this!" In this way we get cool products. Sam's right. Collaboration.
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