Originality vs. Authenticity vs. Uniqueness
It’s Marco with the setup. I was replying in the comments, but it was turning out a little too long.
Originality, Authenticity, and Uniqueness are synonyms only in the sense that people use them interchangeably, but that’s probably a mis-use. They often coincide, but they mean very different things. Unique means one-of-a-kind. Authentic means real or not a copy. Original means first or not a copy or just creative.
So, in example comic:
“Mission of Myanmar” is not unique, because other people have said it before, but it is authentic because Grrl thought of it herself rather than copying it from anyone and she also genuinely wants to be that band. It is original in some sense because while she wasn’t the first to think of it, she didn’t copy it: she created it herself.
The Internet makes it obvious that these things are not the same, and shortens the time that it takes for people to realize that their originality may not be unique. But it’s hardly a new problem; think about Leibniz and Newton both discovering calculus independently of each other but arguing over who did it first. As if it mattered.
Of course, the argument has its limits: you could theoretically discover Calculus now, and it might be a perfectly original or authentic discovery, but it would still be somewhat pointless. (Then again, see Borges’ “Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote” for a meditation on what it would mean for someone in the present to literally rewrite Don Quixote word for word).
May 10th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
It might be immediately pointless for the world, but it wouldn’t be pointless for you — and anyone who could reinvent calculus from scratch, never having heard of it, is someone the world needs badly.
May 10th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Back in ‘95 I was working on a screenplay at the same time that Amateur by Hal Hartley came out. I knew nothing about the film but I had heard good things about Hartley so I went. His story was nothing like mine but the opening was virtually IDENTICAL. So I scrapped that screenplay. Even if anybody believed that I came up with the idea independently it was obvious that Hartley thought of it first and it seemed wrong to use it. Maybe that’s why I’ve never seen a Hartley film since.
May 14th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Marco, Marco, Marco…of course they are not the same.
I own an Authentic Copy of Windows XP. I assure it is in fact authenti-genuine, but likewise neither the original nor unique.
Or a more marco friendly example that eschews technology: a given theatrical performance, lets say Lear, may be authentic (follows the script) and the specific instance is unique (only YOU can prevent your daughters from making off with your phat lutes) but its not original.
Seriously, I KNOW he read “art in the age of mechanical reproduction”
May 15th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Doug, welcome to the blog. I was wondering when you’d find it, though I thought you knew about it and just didn’t read it out of sloth.
By the way, I reserve all rights to harsh on Marco here. If you want to harsh on him directly, use his own blog. By the way, I thought the same thing, but figured Walter Benjamin was just a lot of Shiner Bocks ago.
May 16th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
For what it’s worth I have forgotten virtually everything I ever learned in college or anywhere for that matter. I’ve retained only enough to complete the NYTimes Crossword.