Who's Idea Was It Anyways?

What does original mean? Does it even exist in this new society? Original can be defined as work composed firsthand. But is that still true?

I never gave much thought to the word remix. All i ever thought it meant was when someone took a song and altered it into something new. Little did I know that remixing was much more than that. 

The word remix covers a lot more than music. It can also be applied to ideas. To remix something is to take an original idea and then add or take away from it to create something new. Whether it be a popular song or a piece of technology.

For example, the iPod. Many would say that the iPod is at the top. Today it is very uncommon to see someone using something other than an iPod to listen to their playlists. It is probably safe to say that everyone thinks the iPod is the first of its kind, I know I did. Of course we all know about the MP3 player, but the iPod is so much more than the MP3 that it hardly seems fair to consider them the same. But what most people don't know is that the iPod's sleek design is in fact not original. If one were to compare the iPod to the TR-1, the similarities would not go unnoticed. So is the iPod really original?

Originality is something that everybody strives for. This is somewhat comical considering know one really knows what original is anymore. People that think they are being original by wearing their parent's old clothes from the 80s are sadly mistaken. Out of style does not mean original. Obviously if someone wore it before you, you are not being original.

Nothing is original today. All of our styles and technologies have been thought of elsewhere at a different time. All we have been doing over the years is taking what someone has already thought of and tweaking it until we believe its better. So the idea can no longer be considered original because we are not the ones that though of it. 

This act of tweaking and adjusting is called remixing. Taking the original and adding new ideas to it. One example of a remix in action is when Madonna's attempt to stop illegal downloading backfired. When she released her new album she new there would be pirates waiting to illegally download it for free. So as a way to stop them she set up link to false pages where individuals who thought they were getting free access to her new songs were instead given a little surprise. Oh they definitely got to hear Madonna's voice, just not in one of her songs. Instead they got to hear her screaming at them asking what the f*** do you think your doing?! Naturally these pirates were not to happy with her little surprise. So they retaliated. They took her little voice recording and turned it into a song. Suffice to say people were entertained by this for quite awhile. Contests were set up to see who could create the best remix out of her recording. Apparently some people were not done with her takedown and continued to hack into her own website where her new album, the one she worked so hard to protect, became free for download for whoever wanted it.

The remix can be considered a lot of things. Freedom of expression, retaliation, boredom. But one things for sure. Everything in today's society is in someway a remix of something from our past.