Everything is a Remix
Is the subject of a wonderful 10 minute TED talk
General Theme – everything is built on what went on before
This is a follow on to my post on Derivative Art
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The above TED talk is part 1 of what evolved to a four-part series.
The Complete series is here
Here is some general info on the “Remix Culture” - Wiki
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“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
From the letters of Isaac Newton
This is a familiar form of the “shoulders” quote, but
It goes back to the 12th century
“One who develops future intellectual pursuits by understanding and building on the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past”.
It’s a good thing F=ma wasn’t patentable 
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The goal of US patent law is
“promote the progress of useful arts” (emphasis mine)
BUT - in many ways it does anything but that
What if Apple filed a 20 page patent for
Unlocking a tablet device with a finger swipe?
or another for
Putting beveled edges on computer tablets?
or?? the list goes on….
Oh, I forgot. Apple did do that! 
In a similar vein -
What if Henry Ford had patented human transport via gasoline powered wheeled vehicles?
“I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work … progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable.” — Henry Ford
Or the Wright brothers – human transport via powered flying machines?
AND – speaking of wheels….
Music -
“The words are the important thing. Don’t worry about tunes. Take a tune, sing high when they sing low, sing fast when they sing slow, and you’ve got a new tune.” Woody Guthry
Art -
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” — Attributed to Pablo Picasso
General -
“Originality is the art of concealing your sources.” — Attributed to various sources including Ben Franklin & Thomas Edison
“Substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources ” Mark Twain
On a personal note -
What if I had patented “Adaptive shortest path routing” (look it up in one of the Bell Lab Tech Journals circa 1973)?
It’s at the heart of all modern digital communications – internet, phone, ….
I’d be a very rich man. In the day AT&T offered me a senior Bell Labs position (I declined) and they totally revised their long distance phone system (the only one there was in the US then – pre-divestiture) based on their estimate of capital expenditure savings to the tune of billions per year from my invention
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Name Change that tune – (Steve Jobs quotes)
1st came -
“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”
When asked in an interview the 80′s, at the Mac introduction, about using Xerox Palo Alto Research Labs user interface designs (including the mouse) for the Mac
Later came -
“They are shamelessly copying us.”
About Microsoft and the operating system which would be released as Vista
and more recently -
“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
On Android, a mobile OS that he felt was copied from Apple
It must depend on whose foot the shoe is on….
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