Saturday, March 19, 2011

Something Borrowed

In "Something Borrowed," Gladwell supports the claim that plagiarism is copying someone's work for purposes other than to use "old words in the service of a new idea" (73).  By this, Gladwell gets the points across that through plagiarism, society has expanded upon many more ideas, has generally acquired more information, and has attained better results.  For example, many songs have very similar resemblances to pieces of music that were recorded before them; some of these later songs have helped establish a particular genre, such as "Smells Like Team Spirit" (thought to be originally derived from "More Than a Feeling") (70).  Gladwell goes on to say that plagiarism can be considered a compliment in some cases.  However, most people who's work has been plagiarized are very cold about it because they feel like the plagiarizer stole their creativity and won't give them credit for it.  Another form of plagiarism that is examined in this piece is essentially stealing someone's identity.

I thought that this piece was boring and I found myself becoming distracted while reading it.  I thought that the part about how plagiarized music is often dismissed by the court system to be a little interesting but the rest of it was really dull.

No comments:

Post a Comment