Ideas

Something struck me recently whilst looking into copyright for a client. It's a thought I've had before about the nature of ideas. A friend of mine, Matt Jones  who is a very clever chap, came up with the idea of Warchalking and for a while there the idea looked set to out grow its owner. Rather than Matt "owning" the idea the idea started to own him to the point that no matter how far away he tried to position himself from it the more it came back to get him. It got so bad that various government bodies in the States wanted to talk to him regarding the threat this idea had posed. Kinda cool really and begs the question about copyright. I guess others weren't keen to claim ownership of his idea as the idea itself was dangerous and not valuble so the laws of copyright weren't needed. Which is both sad and extremely exciting. I love the thought that an idea can run amock and become far bigger than any individual. I guess history is littered with examples of this...Communism, Capitalism, dare I say it but most of the big religions... Its almost the test of an idea; can it be bigger than the simple context in which it was created? Yes? then its a corker but dont expect to own it it now owns you!

Comments

[matt]

read these, somewhat related...:

http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?041122fa_fact

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/11/art-as-stew.asp

[Mike]

ta