Creativity is a remix | Kirby Ferguson

421,913 views ・ 2012-08-10

TED


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Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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We're going to begin in 1964.
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Bob Dylan is 23 years old, and his career
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is just reaching its pinnacle.
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He's been christened the voice of a generation,
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and he's churning out classic songs
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at a seemingly impossible rate,
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but there's a small minority of dissenters, and they claim
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that Bob Dylan is stealing other people's songs.
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2004. Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse,
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takes the Beatles' "White Album,"
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combines it with Jay-Z's "The Black Album"
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to create "The Grey Album."
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"The Grey Album" becomes an immediate sensation online,
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and the Beatles' record company sends out countless
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cease-and-desist letters for "unfair competition
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and dilution of our valuable property."
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Now, "The Grey Album" is a remix.
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It is new media created from old media.
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It was made using these three techniques:
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copy, transform and combine.
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It's how you remix. You take existing songs,
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you chop them up, you transform the pieces,
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you combine them back together again,
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and you've got a new song, but that new song
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is clearly comprised of old songs.
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But I think these aren't just the components of remixing.
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I think these are the basic elements of all creativity.
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I think everything is a remix,
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and I think this is a better way to conceive of creativity.
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All right, let's head back to 1964, and let's hear
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where some of Dylan's early songs came from.
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We'll do some side-by-side comparisons here.
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All right, this first song you're going to hear
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is "Nottamun Town." It's a traditional folk tune.
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After that, you'll hear Dylan's "Masters of War."
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Jean Ritchie: ♫ In Nottamun Town, not a soul would look out, ♫
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♫ not a soul would look up, not a soul would look down. ♫
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Bob Dylan: ♫ Come you masters of war, ♫
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♫ you that build the big guns, you that build the death planes, ♫
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♫ You that build all the bombs. ♫
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Kirby Ferguson: Okay, so that's the same basic melody
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and overall structure. This next one is "The Patriot Game,"
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by Dominic Behan. Alongside that,
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you're going to hear "With God on Our Side," by Dylan.
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Dominic Behan: ♫ Come all ye young rebels, ♫
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♫ and list while I sing, ♫
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♫ for the love of one's land is a terrible thing. ♫
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BD: ♫ Oh my name it is nothin', ♫
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♫ my age it means less, ♫
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♫ the country I come from is called the Midwest. ♫
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KF: Okay, so in this case, Dylan admits
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he must have heard "The Patriot Game," he forgot about it,
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then when the song kind of bubbled back up
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in his brain, he just thought it was his song.
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Last one, this is "Who's Going To Buy You Ribbons,"
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another traditional folk tune.
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Alongside that is "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right."
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This one's more about the lyric.
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Paul Clayton: ♫ It ain't no use to sit and sigh now, ♫
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♫ darlin', and it ain't no use to sit and cry now. ♫
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BD: ♫ It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe, ♫
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♫ if you don't know by now, ♫
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♫ and it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe, ♫
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♫ it'll never do somehow. ♫
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KF: Okay, now, there's a lot of these.
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It's been estimated that two thirds of the melodies
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Dylan used in his early songs were borrowed.
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This is pretty typical among folk singers.
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Here's the advice of Dylan's idol, Woody Guthrie.
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"The worlds are the important thing.
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Don't worry about tunes. Take a tune,
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sing high when they sing low,
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sing fast when they sing slow, and you've got a new tune."
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(Laughter) (Applause)
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And that's, that's what Guthrie did right here,
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and I'm sure you all recognize the results.
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(Music)
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We know this tune, right? We know it?
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Actually you don't.
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That is "When the World's on Fire," a very old melody,
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in this case performed by the Carter Family.
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Guthrie adapted it into "This Land Is Your Land."
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So, Bob Dylan, like all folk singers, he copied melodies,
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he transformed them, he combined them with new lyrics
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which were frequently their own concoction
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of previous stuff.
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Now, American copyright and patent laws run counter
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to this notion that we build on the work of others.
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Instead, these laws and laws around the world
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use the rather awkward analogy of property.
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Now, creative works may indeed be kind of like property,
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but it's property that we're all building on,
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and creations can only take root and grow
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once that ground has been prepared.
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Henry Ford once said, "I invented nothing new.
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I simply assembled the discoveries of other men
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behind whom were centuries of work.
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Progress happens when all the factors that make for it
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are ready and then it is inevitable."
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2007. The iPhone makes it debut.
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Apple undoubtedly brings this innovation to us early,
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but its time was approaching because its core technology
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had been evolving for decades.
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That's multi-touch, controlling a device
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by touching its display.
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Here is Steve Jobs introducing multi-touch
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and making a rather foreboding joke.
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Steve Jobs: And we have invented a new technology
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called multi-touch.
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You can do multi-fingered gestures on it,
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and boy have we patented it. (Laughter)
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KF: Yes. And yet, here is multi-touch in action.
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This is at TED, actually, about a year earlier.
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This is Jeff Han, and, I mean, that's multi-touch.
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It's the same animal, at least.
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Let's hear what Jeff Han has to say about this
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newfangled technology.
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Jeff Han: Multi-touch sensing isn't anything --
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isn't completely new. I mean, people like Bill Buxton
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have been playing around with it in the '80s.
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The technology, you know, isn't the most exciting thing here
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right now other than probably its newfound accessibility.
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KF: So he's pretty frank about it not being new.
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So it's not multi-touch as a whole that's patented.
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It's the small parts of it that are,
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and it's in these small details where
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we can clearly see patent law contradicting its intent:
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to promote the progress of useful arts.
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Here is the first ever slide-to-unlock.
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That is all there is to it. Apple has patented this.
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It's a 28-page software patent, but I will summarize
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what it covers. Spoiler alert: Unlocking your phone
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by sliding an icon with your finger. (Laughter)
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I'm only exaggerating a little bit. It's a broad patent.
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Now, can someone own this idea?
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Now, back in the '80s, there were no software patents,
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and it was Xerox that pioneered the graphical user interface.
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What if they had patented pop-up menus,
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scrollbars, the desktop with icons that look like folders
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and sheets of paper?
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Would a young and inexperienced Apple
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have survived the legal assault from a much larger
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and more mature company like Xerox?
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Now, this idea that everything is a remix might sound
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like common sense until you're the one getting remixed.
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For example ...
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SJ: I mean, Picasso had a saying.
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He said, "Good artists copy. Great artists steal."
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And we have, you know,
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always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
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KF: Okay, so that's in '96. Here's in 2010.
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"I'm going to destroy Android because it's a stolen product."
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(Laughter)
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"I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." (Laughter)
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Okay, so in other words, great artists steal, but not from me.
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(Laughter)
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Now, behavioral economists might refer to this sort of thing as loss aversion
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We have a strong predisposition towards protecting
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what we feel is ours.
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We have no such aversion towards copying
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what other people have, because we do that nonstop.
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So here's the sort of equation we're looking at.
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We've got laws that fundamentally treat creative works as property,
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plus massive rewards or settlements
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in infringement cases, plus huge legal fees
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to protect yourself in court,
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plus cognitive biases against perceived loss.
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And the sum looks like this.
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That is the last four years of lawsuits
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in the realm of smartphones.
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Is this promoting the progress of useful arts?
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1983. Bob Dylan is 42 years old, and his time
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in the cultural spotlight is long since past.
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He records a song called "Blind Willie McTell,"
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named after the blues singer, and the song
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is a voyage through the past, through a much darker time,
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but a simpler one, a time when musicians like Willie McTell
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had few illusions about what they did.
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"I jump 'em from other writers
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but I arrange 'em my own way."
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I think this is mostly what we do.
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Our creativity comes from without, not from within.
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We are not self-made. We are dependent on one another,
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and admitting this to ourselves isn't an embrace
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of mediocrity and derivativeness.
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It's a liberation from our misconceptions,
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and it's an incentive to not expect so much from ourselves
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and to simply begin.
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Thank you so much. It was an honor to be here.
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Thank you. (Applause)
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Thank you. Thank you. (Applause)
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Thank you. (Applause)
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