Dreamers...

I've been trying to figure out why this article in the NYTimes bothered me so much when I read it this morning. I think I have it - it's the part where the girl's agent states that “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,”.

Seriously?

It's not so much the fact that the author essentially lifted entire pages from another book. Hell, even Shakespeare was accused of plagiarising large portions of his plays from Italian plays of the time. I think what is bothering me is that this attitude seems to be representative of the cultural shift towards a society where people lack any semblance of a grand vision. There's a mass settling for incremental innovation, and people seem to have lost the ability to develop really big dreams to build towards. There was a really good article in the Economist about the general lack of faith in humanity's ability to progress a few months ago - basically, people seem to think that we've come as far as we can...and that we're just treading water at this point.

This really worries me.

Hey, I'm all for mash-ups. Taking bits and pieces of culture and smooshing them back together in a new format is fun. Girl Talk amuses me to no end - picking out the few notes of an obscure musical reference is a great parlor game. And arguably, it is a creative act, but please people...the Mona Lisa, it ain't. So, I have to ask - how did we get here? Why are we so bereft of dreamers? Even those who are touted as artists seem to be content with simply reheating pop culture. I mean, it's been going on for awhile (Andy Warhol anyone?), but why are we so pessimistic about our future now, of all times?

It's a tiny understatement to say that we live in an era of change. I watched a great video on cloud computing the other day, and I honestly felt staggered. It's absolutely mind blowing to contemplate the social shift that we're about to go through. Here, you should watch it too.



What gets me the most is...why the hell are the majority of people willing to accept that we're stuck with what we have - and proceed to rehash it to bits - when major change is happening RIGHT NOW? Where have all the visionaries gone?