Defining Our Perceptions

During the past couple weeks in Digital Rhetoric and Writing class, we’ve discussed the topics of originality and literacy. Much of the debate seemed to center on 1) how people perceive these concepts and 2) how the nuances of the words themselves affect those perceptions. I enjoy “playing” with words, so I immediately became interested how language can influence a person’s belief about something.

One example of this was my recent post on originality. Several of my peers pointed out the material may not be “new,” but certainly the varying combinations of that material should be counted as “original.” Really, disagreements about this concept go back to how we define “original” versus “creative.” Superficially, these two words are very simple, but they carry so much weight! Shaun Tan, a professional author and illustrator of children’s books, wrote:

Each work contains many thousands of ingredients, experiments, discoveries and transforming decisions executed over several months, compressed into a very small space, 32 pages of words and pictures. Everything can be explained in terms of process, influences, developmental elaboration and reduction. What is original is not the ideas themselves, but the way they are put together. The fact that we recognize anything at all would seem to indicate that this is the case—a truly original idea would probably be so unfamiliar as to be unreadable, an impenetrably alien artifact. (4)

Tan then discussed in further detail the myriad of sources that influenced The Rabbits, a popular book of his. I discovered that many of my thoughts about originality and creativity align with what Tan wrote in his paper. Tan also stated, “For me, that's what creativity is—playing with found objects, reconstructing things that already exist, transforming ideas or stories I already know” (9).

A person’s actions are influenced by his perception, so consider how a person’s perception about originality would affect his actions. Well, depending on the extremity of his views, he could become either a blatant plagiarist or a paranoid citationist (yeah, I just made that word up).  Or, perceptions about originality and creativity could play major roles in court cases determining copyright laws, such as the 1991 case of Feist Publications, Inc., vs Rural Telephone Service Company. Part of the court rulings read as follows:

Factual compilations, on the other hand, may possess the requisite originality. The compilation author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the collected data so that they may be used effectively by readers. These choices as to selection and arrangement, so long as they are made independently by the compiler and entail a minimal degree of creativity, are sufficiently original that Congress may protect such compilations through the copyright laws. (II A)

Those were some effects of people’s perceptions of originality and creativity. Now consider the implications of other words, such as “writing” and “communication.” According to an article titled, “Writing, Technology and Teens”:

The main reason teens use the internet and cell phones is to exploit their communication features. Yet despite the nearly ubiquitous use of these tools by teens, they see an important distinction between the “writing” they do for school and outside of school for personal reasons, and the “communication” they enjoy via instant messaging, phone text messaging, email and social networking sites. (2)

This excerpt, as well as the rest of the report, made me think about writing and what constitutes as “writing.” What makes a person a “writer”? I thought this would make for some interesting discussion. What were your perceptions of writing five years ago compared to now? How are your views changing, and who—or what—contributed to those changes?