[su_video url=”https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6867325/Goldsmith%20Ken%20Edit.mp4″ poster=”http://mindfulnessless.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/angel-204158_1280-1.jpg” title=”Goldsmith”][/su_video]

[su_quote style=”modern-light”]When skill is out of the picture, and it is in most of my books, then you’re left with the concept,” he said. “My cutting and pasting is an acknowledgment of this. I’m dead serious that this is writing now. You may not want to hear that or think of it as writing, but I’m telling you that the moving of information is a literary act in and of itself. Even when people aren’t reading it.[/su_quote]

 

what about doing the same thing with meaningful content in which you enhance some of its significance by reframing it? William Burrough was even more extreme in “retextualizing” text. Borges

Borges  Pale Fire

[su_quote style=”modern-light”]My books are so boring that even the copy editors can’t read them.” He believes that the propositions his writing presents—uncreative writing’s permission to borrow entire texts, for example—are more interesting than the writing itself. “I don’t have a readership,” he said. “I have a thinkership”.[/su_quote]

On the web, circulation has surpassed ownership: someone owns a material artifact, but who owns a JPEG?” from “Wasting Time on the Internet[su_testimonial]Borges quote on owning a  book, you don’t need to read it. (Link it and anchor)[/su_testimonial]

[su_quote style=”modern-light”]The best thing about conceptual poetry is that it doesn’t need to be read. You don’t have to read it. As a matter of fact, you can write books, and you don’t even have to read them. My books, for example, are unreadable. All you need to know is the concept behind them. Here’s every word I spoke for a week. Here’s a year’s worth of weather reports… and without ever having to read these things, you understand them. [/su_quote]

[su_quote style=”modern-light”]“You may not want to hear that or think of it as writing, but I’m telling you that the moving of information is a literary act in and of itself. Even when people aren’t reading it.”[/su_quote]
An updated notion of genius would have to center around one’s mastery of information and its dissemination.
[su_quote style=”modern-light”]On the web, circulation has surpassed ownership: someone owns a material artifact, but who owns a JPEG? [/su_quote]
[su_quote style=”modern-light”]And I think this is the real epiphany: the ways in which culture is distributed become profoundly more intriguing as a cultural artifact itself. What we’ve experienced is an inversion of consumption, one in which we’ve come to prefer the acts of acquisition over that which we are acquiring, the bottles over the wine.[/su_quote]

It’s not plagiarism in the digital age — it’s repurposing.

If you don’t want something to exist – and there are many reasons to want to keep things private – keep it off the web. But if you put it in digital form, expect it to be bootlegged, remixed, manipulated, and endlessly commented upon.

I think that writers often try too hard in the name of expression, when often it’s just a matter of reframing what’s around you or republishing a preexisting text into a new environment that makes for a successful work.

“The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”

“The role of the professor now is part party host, part traffic cop, full-time enabler.”