“There is no such thing as an original idea.” -Mark Twain.

As I was doom-scrolling this morning, fighting the urge to get out of bed, I had a bittersweet encounter with this very quote.

My mind rushed me into overthinking this whole project and so charmingly led me down a spiraling hole of self deprecation based in a vague recollection of thing i had come up with that were now looking like plagiarism.

It wasn’t until I looked around enough that I realized that, technically, everything is a copy of everything. My Target Lamp probably came from a team that replicated a lamp which the executives saw somewhere else and tokened as efficient. My TV is just one of the 4 trillion options you’d find at Best Buy. The list could go on forever. We are so comfortable with replication that one of the best compliments to receive in the present day is “your X reminds me a little bit of Y!” For example, as a former art/design student there wasn’t a better feeling than when a critic would reference a niche architect while looking at my boards.

This then makes me wonder two things:

Note: This article might continue to be developed through the course of a this next year.