Surely I can’t be the first per­son to say it: Our culture’s demand that every great mind be orig­i­nal has become a sti­fling horror.

First, because the sup­posed traits of “orig­i­nal­ity” are a sham, except among the insane. You’re rid­ing the yel­low line next to “schiz­o­phrenic” if you’ve writ­ten an unin­tel­li­gi­ble con­text­less ram­ble in a pri­vate lan­guage. You may already be a sociopath if you con­sis­tently dis­avow the con­ver­sa­tions and train­ing and cul­tural embed­ded­ness of your work’s greater con­text. You’re prob­a­bly delusional—even though we’re all out to under­mine you—if you keep ignor­ing the fre­quent simul­ta­ne­ous appear­ance of sim­i­lar works in diverse set­tings around the world.

And as any decent crazy per­son should, you will get upset when you see “your” idea pop­ping up all over the world as if other peo­ple had stolen it.

Sec­ond, because orig­i­nal­ity is an arti­fi­cial lim­i­ta­tion on a con­tex­tual but intrin­si­cally unlim­ited resource. Cre­ative problem-​​solving. Could you build me a house for this land­scape unlike other people’s? Could you make me think about the mono­lithic raw fact of the world, at least one facet which con­cerns me today, in a way nobody else ever has? Could you design me a drug for my dis­ease, or a valve for my plumb­ing, or a rocket for my war, or a chair which inspires my aes­thete crowd in a way oth­ers in my salient cul­tural net­work will not have expe­ri­enced? Could you please write a book for me, refer­ring to the touch­stones of my cul­tural iden­tity, but which at the same time takes an eye-​​opening new stance?

But don’t use any weird mate­ri­als or tech­niques or too much other funny stuff, of course. Make it just dif­fer­ent enough.

Third, because the illu­sion that con­tin­gent cre­ativ­ity is lim­ited fos­ters rent-​​seeking behav­ior where no rea­son­able claim exists. Of course I will cite you when I explain to my stu­dents about your evoca­tive imagery of rain­drops on cer­tain vari­eties of flower petals, and also your view on the whiskers on kit­tens. I agree to pay that license fee when­ever I drink from a cup with the open­ing cun­ningly placed at the top, rather than the bot­tom. I will hap­pily relin­quish this thing my peo­ple have known since before the mis­sion­ar­ies came, hav­ing heard of your recent patent of the active com­pounds therein. All I have are these cites, whuffie, money, jail time and pub­lic apolo­gies: please take whichever you feel best ame­lio­rates my mis­take.

Not because yours is sub­stan­tially bet­ter than this other one, but because it has been duly recorded in the Big Book of One Law that you used up the entire fuck­ing idea when you staked your claim.

Fourth, because the rent-​​seeking infra­struc­ture sup­ports leeches. Not much more to say on this, right? We will pur­sue your claim. We will root out the inter­lop­ers. We will cre­ate and main­tain a cen­tral cat­a­log that includes your work. We will mon­i­tor the medium itself so that your priv­i­lege is not under­mined. We will strive cease­lessly to extend your priv­i­lege, indeed until well after you are dead.

For a nom­i­nal frac­tion of the fees you are owed.

These can­not be new sto­ries. And I can’t be both­ered to look up who’s been writ­ing about them.

Except every­body since for­ever.

I’m not rant­ing because I’m tired of the easily-​​ridiculed but oner­ous legal restric­tions, the grow­ing tis­sue of lies cen­tered around “cre­ativ­ity” and “exclu­siv­ity” in our legal frame­work, or any of that old crap. Those are easy. Every­body is mad about them.

Hell, we were mad about all that crap before the rest of you started jump­ing on the band­wagon.

No, I’m upset because I got mad the other day when an ass­hole Ger­man engi­neer I know from a con­fer­ence pub­lished a preprint where he posed an “orig­i­nal” the­ory essen­tially iden­ti­cal to stuff we talked about years ago—and he didn’t cite any­body I think he should have, imply­ing that he is map­ping out some New Fron­tier of Thought.

And because Stephen Wol­fram, the man per­son­ally, pisses me off—because his doorstop rel­e­gates the life’s work of smart peo­ple I know to occa­sional men­tions in the tiny appen­dix, imply­ing to most peo­ple that he invented Sci­ence Itself.

I’m upset because when I look at some­thing in some ran­dom book or web­site, or hear some­thing, or some­body men­tions it to me, and it’s a thing I once felt pride in doing or even know­ing, but now every­body does or knows it —I am dri­ven to feel that they’re doing it wrong.

I know because it was some­thing I invested actual think­ing time in back when. And here it is now, much later, being pop­u­lar­ized! And if you look, none of the “orig­i­nal” cre­ative peo­ple who made it a thing to me are men­tioned. It’s all these new main­stream immigrants.

What right have they to it, with­out giv­ing credit where it’s due? Worse, what right have they to use our words to mis­lead their naive fol­low­ers now?

This has hap­pened through the years with “Chaos the­ory”, “com­plex­ity” research, “bio­com­put­ing” research, “agile” soft­ware devel­op­ment and man­age­ment, “cowork­ing”, the “social Web”, “social net­works”, “Prag­ma­tism”… that’s just a quick off-​​the-​​cuff list for me. I did early work with a thing, and nobody much cared, and then much later some­body else did slightly over­lap­ping work, and now it’s all the fuck­ing rage.

And I think Dammit, in my day we were try­ing to save the world, not just sell wid­gets like this ass­hole. Why are they all lis­ten­ing to him? Doesn’t any­body ever read what we said back then when this was really new?

Your mileage may vary, but I will make you eat your hat if you haven’t expe­ri­enced this same emo­tion when faced with inter­lop­ers and other late­com­ers announc­ing their dis­cov­ery of cer­tain styles and gen­res of “sci­ence fic­tion”, “paint­ing”, “pho­tog­ra­phy”, “local food”, “book arts”, “user expe­ri­ence”, “func­tional pro­gram­ming”, “punk”, “con­ser­vatism”, “pro­gres­sivism”, “min­i­mal­ism”, “sus­tain­abil­ity”, “blog­ging”, “anar­chism”, “free verse”, “that crap they call ‘role­play­ing’ these days”, “that crap they call ‘news’ and ‘jour­nal­ism’ these days”, “eco­nomic devel­op­ment”, “genet­ics”, “peren­nial gar­den­ing”, “aero­nau­tics”, “com­pas­sion”, “Chris­t­ian faith”, “Bud­dhism” and so on.

Some folks might think I’m describ­ing envy; that one has a sense of vio­la­tion because these new­fan­gled pop­u­lar­iz­ers are get­ting all the rents one feels are owed to the “real” inven­tors. But it’s not.

I admit it might be a bit like pride. But a strange sort of pride, where you didn’t real­ize you had any until a plug was pulled and it all drained out.

No. I think not.

I think it’s a lot more like the feel­ing you get—as my wife Bar­bara pointed out a cou­ple of days back (see what I did there?)—when you first real­ize your child is her own per­son, and that she’s made her own deci­sion, and that despite all your early work to bring her up right, she’s going to hare off in her own direction.

Because you know what’s over in that direc­tion. You know the has­sle and dan­ger, the illu­sions and pain, the inef­fi­cien­cies and unsat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ences she’s head­ing for, because you expe­ri­enced them all years ago. You tried to keep her from doing that stu­pid stuff, and tried to get her to see the cool stuff, the life-​​saving and sim­ple stuff, the right stuff, but she’s thought­lessly skep­ti­cal about any­thing she actu­ally heard. And worse, some­day she will come back and announce as “new” some­thing you knew all along.

I think I’m upset because “orig­i­nal­ity cul­ture” makes me feel that all the time now. Not con­tent to be a mere hip­ster claim­ing to have prior knowl­edge of every cul­tural and intel­lec­tual phe­nom­e­non, I am reduced to some hor­rific recur­sive hip­ster, who feels that sad­ness when­ever I am shown some­body is explor­ing a known thing with their own per­spec­tive.

Because of course it’s “orig­i­nal­ity cul­ture” that makes me imag­ine that my expe­ri­ence of that thing, long ago, which I failed to com­mu­ni­cate to these new­com­ers, is in any way salient to what they have going on in their lives. When I did it, it was new, and we expended valu­able resources and took per­sonal risks to do all that, and coined all these new terms to describe the amaz­ingly insight­ful stuff nobody had ever talked about before.

I like to call this the Tozier Effect.

Of course the ass­hole Ger­man can talk about stuff we both have done, for the same rea­son I can: it’s cool and it will help the world to know more about it. And because I am also an ass­hole Ger­man to somebody.

Of course Wol­fram can be the Edi­son of the Sym­bolic World, for the same rea­son Edi­son could: it’s cool and it will help the world to know more about it. And because I have also played Edi­son in my time.

And the nou­veau “agilists” and “com­plex­ol­o­gists” and “Web 3.0 gurus” and the lat­est Busi­ness Rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and TED-​​talking Inspi­ra­tional Crowd are wel­come to carry on.

There’s enough rea­son for me to ques­tion the very notion of orig­i­nal­ity just in the fact that we so rarely ques­tion the vocab­u­lary we use to dis­cuss it.

I don’t care if you keep using those terms and notions… mostly. Why should I waste time striv­ing to under­mine your claims about how “orig­i­nal­ity” works? Espe­cially by fram­ing my argu­ments in that same ques­tion­able lan­guage of uni­ver­sal­ity, exclu­siv­ity and rights? That’s a sucker’s bet.

I have evi­dence that I’m going to turn out being right when I stop think­ing and talk­ing about “orig­i­nal­ity” in your terms. But I also have evi­dence that you do real good by using those terms. And I have evi­dence that we’re both wrong and should use some other words and ideas instead.

’Tis but the nature of the world.

That said, I’m just decid­ing to stop using those words, even around you. Even when you talk about “your” “cul­ture” “need­ing” to “pro­mote” “inno­va­tion”, even when you talk about “eco­nomic” “growth” and your cul­tural “oblig­a­tion” to be “cited”, or how “artists” will “starve” with­out your “support”.

We’re not going to have those con­ver­sa­tions with those ideas any more, you and me, is all I’m saying.

And I will be a bit hap­pier, and you will be sad and confused.

And that’s an improve­ment, in my book.

Well, OK. Except for one thing.

When it becomes clear that your vocab­u­lary about own­er­ship and rights and pri­or­ity and value is clearly hurt­ing peo­ple? That’s when we will inter­vene. Your wounded ego, your claims that imag­i­na­tion is a zero-​​sum game, your rent-​​seeking, your leech squad—they will become our tar­gets when you cross that line.

Not you. We’re not going to tar­get you. But when you sharpen your final vocab­u­lary into a harm­ful tool, or a cage, or a wall—that’s when we are sup­posed to come along with the breaker bars.

It’s OK. There are other ideas and words in the world. There are always other ones. And you’d be sur­prised how help­ful and good it can be, some­times, to just start with a new batch.

Well, not new as such. You know what I mean.