Idea Theft & Copyrighting Copywriting

Patents protect products, copyright protects written and artistic work, but what about ideas?

My first association with the phrase “copycat” goes back to Sunday school, remarkably. I must have been seven or eight years old and we were drawing. I recall being completely engrossed in my picture (of a house. I can also remember my ‘style’ of drawing houses at that age) and looking up to see the person opposite me drawing the same picture.
“Denise!” I exclaimed in protest (Denise was the teacher).
“So-and-so (can’t recall the person’s name) copied my picture!”
“Don’t worry,” she said, “That means you drew a good picture and you should be flattered.”
And I was.
That was when I was seven (or eight), and maybe that’s what Jesus would have done. I am now 27 and trying to make a living from my ideas and really not enamoured when it happens. Note the plural current tense. It has now happened twice and is on the verge of a third occurrence, methinks.

When the thought thief is an adult, and using the ideas to advance him or herself financially or professionally or worse- both- it isn’t really flattering at all. It’s pretty infuriating.

Which is not to say I haven’t harvested my share of information from professionals in my time. Because I have- plenty of times. The difference is that I have never tried to pass it off as my own. And always done it with the intent of saving the company I worked for money, not channelling it through some nepotistic line and getting a kick-back on the side.
Lesson learnt: it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

The Global Village: Back to The Future?

Despite having left my academic days far behind me (such leisurely undertakings as reading, studying and following one singular train of thought at a time make a rapid exit at the entry of children), I had a flashback to McLuhan’s theory of the ‘global village’ and a relative understanding of it, at least in a South African context.

So, many years ago we were running rampant through undeveloped fields or velds, depending on where we lived. We had acquired the basic skills necessary to get by and had rudimentary means of transport, and figured out what we generally could and couldn’t eat. We were tribal beings living in rural areas and had very simple ways of life. “Work” was probably in the field or veld just down the way from the hut, or at the cattle shed behind the hut. We didn’t have to go far to get there, didn’t have the stress of daily commuter-type travel.

As time went by we went through a few hundred years of urbanisation where we all flocked to the cities, to where ‘it was all happening’, to where the money was to be made. Some people moved their families with them, others left their families in the rural areas and visited them when they could. Today not many of us want to stay in the city.

Now that we have cast our concrete hand on the areas known as towns and cities, and literally bled them dry, the novelty has worn off. How we as a South African community have responded is to bring the city to us. We now perform those functions, formerly reserved for the metropolitan web of cities and towns, inside of our comfort zones. Is this a return to what we, after centuries of modern evolution, originally fled from? Did we swop the urbanity of primal life for the sophistication of the cosmopolitan? Yes and no. it is here that we begin to see a split. Has the convenience of home-run business operations come at the cost of our comfort zones? We have managed somehow to ‘let in’ the modern evils that your average cluster compound has been created to inhibit.

And yes, while McLuhan’s global village is also concerned with the omnipresence of communication technologies and the faster connections between people from all corners, it is also a reference to the pervasion of the capitalist spirit in every sphere of life. While the Blackberry and the laptop are arguably physical extensions of modern man, extensions of the sensory potential of the human being, they are also intrusions. People who work from the home environment will tell you about how much more convenient everything is, how much more flexible everything is. That is only because things that may not have been entirely acceptable at the office, are now completely within limits at home. The shape-shifting of boundaries and the emotional displacement of the human spirit are not very stable or stabilising factors when played with together.

Did pre-urbanised man worry about his crop of mielies when he was sitting in front of his fire with the family around him? Probably. Did this cause him stress-induced insomnia, road rage or weight gain? Probably not; our social development into the value affixed to family time was completely different then. He was probably a patriarchal arsehole of an Alpha Male and didn’t share his fire or thoughts with anyone.

Ok, so maybe we can’t compare properly, but the point is that we have come around full circle and Mcluhan’s theory of the global village is developing at a rapid pace in South African society here lifestyles have been become ‘clustered’ and estates have morphed into self-containing ecosystems which function without completely autonomously- little worlds existing within their own frames of reference. One globe of villages.

Where have all the good words gone?

I used to have conversations with people, read texts, and frequently encountered words I couldn’t define, couldn’t explain, couldn’t place in the correct context. It was intriguing, because it was the beginning of a fervent discovery: looking it up, writing it down, trying to use it and not forget it. Not forget it. Interesting. Does dis-use make it any less real? If a thing is not used for a use, it is useless, is it not? In literary terms, I believe the word is obsolete.

Am I surrounded by stupid people?
Are my social movements any less academic than they used to be? Possibly. Have my chosen media of engagement changed? Perhaps. My departure from the academic realm, however, was based on a desire to enter the ‘professional’ world.

How do we define ‘professional’?
It’s concerning, frankly. Synonyms and definitions bespeak competence, qualification, skill. Perhaps somewhat more concerning is the connection with habit, with routine, with continuing a cycle that is, not as professional as it purports to be.

Speaking of cycles
If we are to believe that words shape meaning (and in Victoria’s Empire, we do), and we lose all the good words, and the depth of meaning, description and emotion they evoke and, by extension, the shaping of our own realities within that meaning, because they fall out of use and because we have transferred them out of reality, and into a virtual space, where are we in a few decades’ time?

Modern Talking: Illiteracy in the Age of Information (a fairy tale for adults)

“The purpose of a fishtrap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.” Chuang-Tsu

In the beginning was the word and, once upon a time, in all human-populated areas of the world people adhered to a system of grammar and punctuation, so that the meaning of the word could be preserved.

There were good words and bad words, formal words and colloquial words, polite words and swear words. There were people who couldn’t spell, and there were people who couldn’t punctuate, but there were also people who upheld a system of consistency and, by extension, the integrity and overall intellect of the people who read the words because words shaped thoughts, and thoughts shaped actions; and words, the meaning that they inferred and expressed, contributed to an abstract called culture.

Then one day, along came something virtual. Unfortunately a large portion of how this virtual thing operated was based on words, and the codes of letters and words. Because this virtual thing was so limitless, so infinite and so huge, humans, already ‘dumbed down’ by a large degree, felt obliged to fill this void with meaningless words, misspelt words, badly connected words. And they did it on a scale referred to as the ‘global village’ so that these ‘wrong’ words could be read by global village idiots everywhere.

The global idiocy spread by something ‘viral’; it spread its sticky web through single countries, and then across continents; its ease and sociability making sure that everyone picked up on it.
It happened at a time when people already struggled to communicate- they got divorced, got retrenched, overspent, overindulged. And then, they stopped talking to one another directly altogether. And what of culture? If a culture of self is anything to go by, a self-reflexive, self-centred kind of culture, then that’s what happened. And they all lived alone, unhappily ever after.

What the world needs now

...is not love, sweet love. It is not war, power, religion or politics, or some ‘higher’ form of institutionalised belief or guidance. It is rather, a return to basics- by which I infer, those fundamentals which we have long forgotten.

Natural energy

A creature of comfort, and a resident of the western world, I realise that the forces of the natural world are pushed further out of mind than they ought to be. At the risk of sounding Romantic (which is no reference to Valentine, but rather the philosophical school of thought which dominated the latter part of the eighteenth century), I have to agree that the beauty of the dawn, trite and clichéd as it may be, shows us that the earth will continue to revolve and the sun will rise regardless of the day-to-day problems we encounter. As the first rays of morning light strike the dewdrops the natural world is awakened- not by the irritation of an alarm clock, not by the jar of a caffeine buzz, but by the inherent rhythmic cycles of the earth, and the command of a universe greater than humanity. Are we the lost creatures, the only beings who don’t succumb to the morning call of mother earth?

Molecular resonance

Somewhat of a recluse and what you might even go so far as to call a social outcast, I have often pondered references to ‘connections’ with other people. The notion of our connectedness to one another, as brothers and sisters of the earth, and the apparently inter-dependent nature (or unnature) of humanity (or inhumanity) has always baffled me and, being the independent person I like to consider myself, been something I have always wanted to deny. What cannot be denied, when people congregate (yes, the religious connotation is intentional) and celebrate good musical rhythm, is the molecular resonance that we vibrate on and respond to. Our primal desire to dance and express ourselves as human animals in response to evocative sounds and rhythms may be repressed, may be denied and very far out of reach, but certainly has not been lost. And, only when the ego has been relegated and relinquished, the intrinsic forces that define us living creatures can emerge.

It is infrequent that Victoria makes concessions. It is not infrequent that Victoria preaches what she does not practice and, she is fully aware that the gist of this piece purports the loss of ego and promotes some semblance of selflessness, despite the fact that it has been written entirely in the first person. Enigma? Contradiction? Perhaps. But perhaps also a step ahead of religious dogma or political indoctrination.

Lessons in catharsis #3

The multi-purpose role of the PR person
1. To take the scanty information obtained from the sales people, coupled with the urgency and uncertainty of the client and compile it into something of a brief for the designer
2. To live up to the undocumented expectation of the clients who have been wined, dined and entertained by the sales people
3. To compensate for, and attempt to disguise the administrative ineptitude of the sales people
4. To overcome the crappy attitude of the designer, the unreasonable expectation of the client and deliver first class artwork that will sell the product while the sales people are preoccupied with the wining and dining of more clients
5. Think around and compensate for all readings and interpretations of the brief by the designer, including not reading and not following it.

Lessons in catharsis #2

The working definitions of the designer:
1. The ability to take the elements of a CI, splash in some colour and a different font and call it art
2. Are synonymous with a crappy attitude
3. Consider themselves exempt from sense and accountability, in so much as they believe the brief has been adhered to
4. Does not communicate in media such as words. This would include things such as telephone calls and emails. Rather unfortunate if you don’t work in the same office space

Lessons in catharsis #1

The unspoken functions of the sales person:
1. To wine, dine and entertain potential clients
2. To beg administrative futility and ineptitude
3. To use the very common gift of the gab and pass it off as an occupational skill
4. To be able to claim such benefits as entertainment allowances, exorbitant telephone bills and travel expenses for the apparent purpose of point one, while actually only really achieving points two and three.

People who drive SUVs should...

...not park on blind corners or on blind rises unless their tank is glass, or really wants to be in the middle of a three car pile-up
...also consider that not everyone else on the road is driving an SUV, and not drive in the middle of their lane, under the impression that people behind them, who happen to be driving jelly beans, can see through them
...not drive up little cars’ asses and try and bully them into driving faster
...not think they have superior rights just because their cars cost the same as a four bedroomed house in the northern suburbs

On Marriage

AKA wedlock (rhymes with headlock)
Why is it, when a happily-living-together couple is blessed with the news of a third life entering the equation, the ever-so sensitive topic of marriage has to enter the fray?
The ring: my absolute favourite! The close-up Hollywood scene of eligible bachelor kneeling down with little box in hand, slowly opening to reveal multiple-carated ring to the gasp of soon-to-be fiancé…what is that? Is the size of the ring over compensation for little man syndrome?
The dress: favoured by traditionalists and dreamt about by girls from knee-height onwards, oh the white dress? Come on? In this day and age? Let’s all get over ourselves.
The handover: from father to be husband, does she really need male guardianship for her entire life?
The definition of self in relation the man: why is it that so many women take such exuberant happiness out of being Mrs. so & so?
** Note: these are not entirely rhetorical questions; if someone out there really does have one or more of the answers, I would love to be enlightened.