Respect for Original Thinking in the Digital Age

51Due教员组给各位留学生分享一篇纯原创代写范文essay，文章主要讨论了随着互联网技术、新媒体和计算机设计软件的广泛使用，设计师有时会面临创意和复制之间的伦理问题。我认为，在数字时代，原创思维应该得到尊重和提倡。设计师必须时刻牢记自己的使命，以原创的创意为世界做出贡献，实现变革。

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With the popular use of Internet technology, new media and computer design software, designers are sometimes faced with the ethical issue between originality and copying. In my opinion, original thinking shall be honored and advocated in the digital age. It is crucial for designers to constantly keep in mind their mission, to contribute to the world with original creativity and bring about transformation.

One example of such ethical issue can be found in obtaining existing work from the public domain without reference. The use of Internet has brought convenience for designers to browse for inspirations. Some designers may not directly copy, but make changes to the original idea and present it in a different form. Some would use the borrowing parts of patterns or images directly in their own design work, without citing the original source. The worst scenario is the complete copycat of certain existing design. As a result, one would find the market filled with similar designs. I think this phenomenon is problematic due to several reasons. Before I go further to illustrate those points, I would like to relate my own experience on this issue.

As a student in graphic design, I am in daily engagement with the creative process. To look for inspirations and gather useful materials is one important step of the design stages. Before I knew how to use the software, I did all drawing and design with my hands. When I got some idea, I would pull out paper and color pencils, to simply draw it out. The focus was purely in my original idea. The process of making the idea into visual language that translated my thoughts was pretty challenging, yet quite rewarding as well after completing. Now with such easy access to other people’s creative work online, I sometimes feel overwhelmed. As graphic designer Nicholas Blechman expressed his concerns, Internet technology and computer software can be “a hindrance because it’s too easy to copy or be influenced by other images and other people’s work. I think that when we were surrounded by fewer images before the Internet, maybe my own work had a little more soul”. I can understand Nicholas’ worries. When there are so many good designs out there that already have been done, a designer can feel the pressure of comparing and competition. Sometimes, if this pressure is not dealt in a positive way, the motivation for originality might be undermined. The threshold to creativity actually has become relatively high, from my experience. To create something truly original and different, one needs to put in much more effort. Despite such difficulty and challenge, I still believe that original thinking is vital and shall be respected. Society has to pay attention to such ethical issue on the act of copying and plagiarism in design, due to the following reasons.

First, original thinking is very important to human being and the progress of a society. Those who copy existing works or incorporate other’s works into their own designs without giving credit disrespect originality. Although the simple action of copying may bring easy profit to those who sell their copycat design product, the design to offer to the market in general would become similar and dull. Such environment is not nourishing for designers to genuinely innovate and create, nor is it good for bringing about transformation to society. Throughout history, designs that have changed people’s life have been truly innovative and original. Take Steve Jobs for example. He launched Apple at a time when “the future seemed to belong to faceless technocrats -- and the large, bureaucratic corporations that employed them, systematically stamping out new products to cater to every scientifically studied need.” However, Jobs managed to change the situation. He was the one who knew how to think out of the box, dreamed big, followed his instinct and made technology like art. He was a true original, because he followed his own passion in life and lived it to the fullest. In his 2005 speech made at Stanford University, he said and I quote here:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living some else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma --- which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Therefore, for Steve Jobs, being original to his own idea and passion is most important. Such belief is demonstrated in his design, the entirely revolutionary Apple product. Steve Jobs’ story shows the importance of originality to human progress and change.

Secondly, technology shall act as aid to human activity, instead of turning into the tool that destroys this valuable human capacity, or makes it less accessible. The phenomenon of copying in design reflects the side effects brought by technology to humans. Instead of thinking independently, or going to nature to discover inspirations, or talking to people for different perspectives, the powerful searching engine of the Internet has saved time for people. This is not necessarily a positive thing. Since people begin to rely on Internet to get information and get inspired, rather than rely on their real life experience. As a matter of fact, their real life experience is insufficient. In this digital age where people are busy socializing, making purchase, learning or expressing online, the Internet is taking up more and more time of one’s life. Time is limited, so is one’s attention and energy. When one is caught up with the rich life in the virtual space, one is deprived of the authentic life in the physical space. People may not even realize this, just as Winner stated,  “the interesting puzzle in our times is that we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence”. What is more, as Winner continues to argue, such reconstituting of human’s social roles and relationships by technology occurs due to its requirement that “human behavior changes to suit its form and process”. It is scary to think that certain human nature becomes secondary to the technology system.

When it comes to the specific situation of a graphic designer, maintaining a relationship with technology also has the danger of losing one’s intuitive creative impulse. From my own experience, when I sit completely in silence and new ideas fall into my mind, I can record these inspirational thoughts quickly by writing them down or drawing some sketches. The action of using my hands at this stage feels more natural, and can bring out more original ideas. However, when sitting in front of the computer design software, one needs to learn its mechanism. To put it in another way, one needs to get familiarized with how this machine operates, in order to create or make things through this technology. To quote from Peter Ahlberg’s book, regarding the relationship between a designer and technology, which I can totally resonate with,

“I’ve always said that the computer, which at first seems like a willing slave, turns out to master your brain because of tis incredible skill, agility, and power. You don’t even know --- it changes the way you think about everything --- form, color and time. There’s never been an instrument like this in human history, and so the first thing you have to do is establish who’s boss.”

I still believe that humans shall be the boss to technology, and be aware of the danger that too much dependence on Internet technology and computer software can cause. The blurring boundary between originality and plagiarism is already a warning of the possible reconstituting that technology has brought to humans.  

A third problematic aspect of this ethical issue is the revealing of a grey area in legality regarding intellectual property and copyright in the digital age. Imagine that when it was in the early age before technology development, an artist painting would not be known by the public unless it was placed into a physical public space, such as a gallery, a museum, or an auction house. In our time, however, the spread of information has become much faster, due to the Internet. Today, not only artists’ work, but even their creating process or can get out to public quickly. The public virtual space has contained so much flowing ideas and images. Under such new condition, the supervising over the use of other people’s ideas becomes more difficult, because how to define the act of copying or plagiarizing may be questionable.

The author Andrew Katz points out that “copyright protects the expression of an idea. Retaining the same idea, but recasting the expression of it in a different form, does not infringe on the copyright.” This definition of the rule is controversial, in my view. The part that copyright does not protect leads to excuses for violation of intellectual properties. Here lies the grey area in terms of the ethical issue discussed in this paper. If a designer uses other people’s idea, or gets inspired and creates similar things, it is not illegal in terms of copyright. As students we know that using other people’s view without annotating or adding citations is deemed as plagiarism. Considered from this perspective, if the borrowing of other people’s idea is not thought as illegal, there shall at least be some ways to regulate such use of materials created or spread online.

Taking a step back, people who accept the conduct of borrowing from others to fuel one’s creativity might argue that the action of copying has a long history. Throughout the creative activities of mankind, many new inventions or innovations are based on what has been created by their predecessors. For instance, although Apple’s product is revolutionary, it has absolutely absorbed some essence from the previous development in telecommunication industry.  Also, since its emergence, jazz has been assimilating various music and cultural characteristics, before it developed into such a rich and diverse category itself. My purpose in this paper is not to argue against the rightfulness of drawing lessons from existing traditions. The key point is to balance the act of learning from others and generating original ideas from inside of you. Just as in the part of the book Design and Designing that discusses about the ethics of a designer, “it’s the grey area outside of infringement that presents the designer or design team with difficult ethical decisions, because the pressures and opportunities are frequently unique to each situation.”  

After all, copying is just imitating what is already be done by others. The new ideas only can emerge if one pays enough attention to build his/her knowledge system, accumulate discoveries and information, and to use proper methods to evoke them in times of need. Such a process, no matter taught through a book or real life experience, consists of a designer’s wisdom. This is the true source to any original thinking and creativity, rather than the scattering images one sees online.

In the end, I hope to raise the concern that originality in creative work is likely to be undermined because of too much reliance on technology. I support and respect original thinking, and encourage designers including myself to nourish creativity from inside. This is especially important and worthy of mindful cultivating at a time when resources are brought to us so conveniently by technology.   (Word count: 2046)     

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