Nothing is original.
Everything is a remix.
The creation myth
It has long been understood that acts of creation and ensuing innovation come only from divine inspiration — products of distant genius unattainable by the common man. We herald those who create in marvel of their godlike wonder. Their creations serve them.
This outside-in approach to creation is egoic at best.
The truth is, no one creates in a vacuum. We are constantly immersed in influence. The most heralded and prolific creators in history, both distant and recent, understand this fact the best.
And they embrace it.
I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing.
Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.
— Henry Ford
Last universal common ancestor
All present life on Earth descends from one single-celled orgasm that lived 3.5 billion years ago — the last universal common ancestor (LUCA).
Think about that for a moment. All living things share this single common genetic heritage. Plants and animals. Humans and sea anemones. Bees and snow leopards.
Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.
— Charles Darwin
As LUCA copied itself as a form of reproduction, it mutated.
Reproductions with mutations or transformations that increased its chances of survival benefited the organism — some of which adopted sexual reproduction, living on tocombine their transformed genes with other favorably mutated descendants.
Through this iterative pattern, LUCA evolved into every living species on the planet.
Ideas evolve in the same way.
Origin of the meme
All present ideas on Earth descend from one universal ideal that transcends humanity — the last universal common meme (LUCM).
Genes are a unit of inheritance and a part of cells, the smallest unit of life. Memes can be thought of as the smallest unit of ideas — and, contrary to popular belief, not silly cat pictures.
The study of memes (memetics) postulates that ideas evolve through memes in the same way as organisms evolve through genes — copying, transforming, and combining with other memes to produce the vast array of ideas that filter through our society and culture.
Physical organisms are a product of their genes.
Abstract ideas are a product of their memes.
Everything is a remix.
In 2012, through a series of videos, Kirby Ferguson proposed a seemingly radical, borderline heretic notion — that nothing is original and everything is a remix of pre-existing material.
Think about that for a moment. All ideas are derivative of and interdependent with each other. Books and films. The printing press and iPhone. Star Wars and Coca-Cola. Nothing stands on its own.
Through this notion, he proposed a latent framework of creation. One that surpasses our often times clouded and nearly religious notions of originality.
Alongside Simon Sinek’s Start with Why, Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix framework stands not to redefine innovation (because the notion of innovation is timeless), but to finally define it.
A framework for innovation
We have defined the difference between iterative, revolutionary, and innovative companies. But how do we define a replicable process for something as abstract as innovation?
Actually, innovation isn’t that abstract all all.
By following the process of genetic natural selection that was then adopted by memetics and in turn simplified by Ferguson’s Remix, we can derive a replicable framework of innovation — which, as you may have guessed, is in turn a remix in and of itself.
In essence — copy, transform, and combine.
Copy
Inspiration isn’t elusive. All memes derive from pre-existing memes, just as all derivatives of LUCA were cells split from the original organism.
Memetic structure
Each idea is composed of many memes, just like each organism is composed of many genes. In turn, each meme is the result of combination with other memes.
We are not consciously aware or our genetic structure and inheritance, just as we may not be consciously aware of the memetic structure of our ideas.
Becoming aware enables us to bring intent to our creation.
Learning process
Our ability to learn runs in parallel with our ability to copy.
Through emulation, we are able to develop a sense of structure and fundamentals that allow us to improvise — to combine using the guidelines of structure to form something novel.
Think of babies learning to talk. They begin by crudely mimicking the sounds they hear from the adults that surround them. Eventually, those sounds develop into vowels, words, and sentences.
Babies don’t have to learn every possible sentence — that would be impossible due to the infinite amount of combinations.
Instead, they adopt the structure of language through copying and begin improvising by continually inferring and correcting against this continually learned set of fundamentals — enabling them to tap into the infinite amount of combinations.
Jobs goes to PARC
In 1979, in exchange for some early stock options, a young Steve Jobs was permitted to see the latest and greatest revolution out of Xerox — the Alto, an experimental personal computer developed by PARC, Xerox’s research division.
The Alto combined a few core concepts that made it a technological revolution.
Graphical user interface
In a day of blinking lights and command lines, the Alto used a graphical interface to convey the complexities of file structure and application management in a simple, visual way.
Mouse
In order to navigate this interface, an early version of a mouse was used — a form of input introduced as complementary to the more traditional keyboard
Network
The Alto was able to communicate with other computers at PARC through an early implementation of an Ethernet network.
Jobs saw these technological revolutions — and wondered why Xerox was, in his eyes, just sitting on them.
If Xerox had known what it had and had taken advantage of its real opportunities, it could have been as big as I.B.M. plus Microsoft plus Xerox combined — and the largest high-technology company in the world.
— Steve Jobs
Transform
The very act of iterating a meme results in mutation — just as when LUCA’s cells split. Even this form of asexual reproduction or duplication where no other genes are combined results in changes, however small they may be.
Inherent iterative improvements
Imagine you are retyping a hard copy of essay.
Whether you intend to or not, you will naturally find typos and make corrections as you go along. Your duplication is no longer an exact copy of the original — it has evolved into another draft, however minor the improvements may be.
When we copy, we rarely leave things the same. As Malcolm Gladwell put it, when you line up the ideas we copy ‘you would not see serial reproduction’ but ‘the evolution of a concept’ — whether intentional or not.
We inherently iterate to higher truth — through minute corrections or otherwise.
Minimalism and higher truth
Bringing intent to our iteration can effectively evolve a concept.
The tenets of minimalism serve as an effective set of principles to guide our intent.
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Minimalism suggests that simplicity is divinity.
An idea has inherent intent — our iterations further enable that eternal, inherent intent to flow through. Each iteration should reduce this latency of truth by further reducing and simplifying.
Simplicity can be defined as natural. Aligning concepts with organic fundamentals enable their intent to flow.
The more minimal the idea, the greater the resonance — and rate of adoption by the masses.
Simplifying the Alto
Jobs returned to Apple like Plato returning to the cave — speaking about the wonders of GUI and navigation with a mouse.
However, these concepts weren’t directly copied. They instead were further simplified and built upon.
A simpler mouse
Xerox’s mouse was a dreadfully mechanical prototype based upon an earlier, even clunkier prototype from Stanford Research Institute.
Jobs brought the idea to an early IDEO — and they produced an even simpler model, going from three buttons to one. The design could be mass produced for cheap.
Direct manipulation
The concept of GUI was further evolved by the Macintosh team.
With the Alto, many manipulative tasks required the use of a menu screen — one that changed location based on the position of the cursor, much like our right-click menus of today.
The Mac eliminated this middle step and kept one main bar static at the top of the screen. Instead of having to pull up a menu to move a file, the user could simply drag-and-drop the file where they wanted it to go.
These minor changes brought meaning to these technological revolutions — utilizing simplicity to take them into the realm of innovation. Simplicity enabled accessibility, and, in turn, resonance and perpetuation of these ideas.
Combine
It wasn’t enough for LUCA to duplicate and mutate on its own — many derivative organisms started combining genetic code with other derivative organisms through sexual reproduction. This combination of transformed genes with other transformed genes results in a diverse array of organisms.
Combining the memetic code of an idea with another is the most powerful way to create something that means something. Something with intent.
Seeing what’s already there
Combining ideas requires a zen-like, passive observation. Through this meditative state, our egos are reduced — and universal consciousness is able to flow through.
When we are attuned to this energy, we are able to see how ideas naturally and intuitively combine in ways that we were blind to before. The reduction of noise enables this signal to come through.
Ego cannot exist in acts of true creation — our inner monologue and sense of self is the noise that drowns out this signal.
Design is already there. The original intent is hidden in plain sight.
A lot of what we seem to be doing in a product… is actually getting design out of the way, and I think when forms develop with that sort of reason, and they’re not just arbitrary shapes, it feels almost inevitable, it feels almost un-designed, it feels almost like ‘of course it’s that way, I mean, why wouldn’t it be any other way?’ — Jony Ive
People ask me how I make music. I tell them I just step into it. It’s like stepping into a river and joining the flow. Every moment in the river has its song. So I stay in the moment and listen. — Michael Jackson
Gestalt
In flow, a reduced state of ego, we are able to bring greater context and relevance to all that surrounds us. It is analogous to a shift to a higher perspective.
For example, imagine a series of objects on a linear plane. While walking along the plane, it is hard to see how these objects interconnect. However, flying above the plane enables you to see how they intertwine and are grouped.
Innovation through combination
The Macintosh had strong initial sales and helped redefine personal computing. Apple had effectively contributed its ‘layer of sediment’.
In the end, it wasn’t any one innovator. It was a combination of interconnected ideas that innovated. Alone, each idea was a revolution. Together, it was an innovation.
Jobs knew this. And, upon his return in the late 90s, he once more applied these concepts to Apple — fostering over a decade of innovation.
Only through interconnection is meaning found.
Divinity is everywhere
The notion of divine inspiration isn’t invalid — it’s just incorrectly understood. Divine iteration isn’t an abstract thing saved only for the chosen few. We are constantly immersed in it. The few who realize it are the ones who utilize it.
By observing this truth, we realize that we are all inherent creators with the ability to see what’s already there. Adopting this inside-out approach to creation enables us to see that creations do not serve the creator, but the creator serves the creations — ‘tipping points in a continuous line of invention by many different people.’
This connective thread is the collective unconscious.
We serve it, not the other way around.
That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun. — Ecclesiastes 1:9
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