Originality and ownership

Recently I am absolutely loving podcasts. At work we had a Mindfulness in May program running which involved listening to daily mindful meditations with the idea of increasing our enjoyment of the moment, and to slow down the whirring mind. These listenings were pleasant, easy and left me feeling quite happy. While searching for podcasts on mindfulness, I started coming across podcast topics that, if I'm honest, interested me a lot more. Podcasts on IDEAS.

My favourite at the moment is the NPR TED radio hour, and I guess I've listened to about 5 of their one-hour podcasts. The latest one was on originality and it wasn't about libraries in any way, except that everything that came up had applications for libraries.

For example. There is no such thing as an original idea. Humans are not capable of an original idea. But we are genius at finding a new perspective or remixing ideas (especially comedians!). Yet we have this idea of copyright and ownership of ideas. How does that make sense, when every new idea is just a remix or re-imagining of an old one? The ownership of ideas doesn't make sense, but the acknowledging of sources does.

The things that stifle originality and creativity are things like patents and paywalls. If we ever wanted to speed up the rate of scientific discovery, or development, just get rid of patents and database paywalls, so that anyone can access the technology and information, combine it with their own area of expertise, and create something crazy and new! This is beauty.

I also loved how they said if you want to have great ideas, switch from alcohol to coffee (and there's a great story behind that, but you'll have to listen to the podcast).

Next, I'm listening to a Radio National podcast titled Big Deals in the Knowledge Business: How Scholarly Publishing Divides Academia on Rear Vision. I know the history and the story well, but listening to it just brings it to life more than reading about it, without losing any of the depth.

Do you have a favourite podcast?

So, I learned how to use on OPML file with Feedly today. Thanks person who set that up!