The German feuilleton and ‘literary establishment’ have been discussing this for the last few weeks, accomplishing nothing. Whole magazine issues have dealt with the plagiarism charges, coming to no concrete result whatsoever.

Of course, art is an utterly subjective manner and basically follows arbitrary rules all the time.

But there is a clear distinction to be made between remixing the works of others and purporting that one has written an original novel. Both are forms of art, but while remixing derives its value at least to a certain extent from the parts that are remixed, originality by definition derives its value from creating something original.

It is a distinction that has to be made independently of any specific work as it’s a basic issue of authorship, originality and the moral compass of an author. Plagiarism is not limited to works of fiction. It is also – perhaps even more so – an important issue in academia and science. Both fields recognize the importance of acknowledging previous works and established authors. As original research is not possible without knowledge of the current status quo within your academic field, creating your own voice similarly consists of having acknowledged and imitated the voices and narratives of others beforehand.

But you accomplish originality only when you transcend incorporating the work of others and add your very own distinctive contribution to it.

I think the concept of originality has to be adamantly defended in today’s remix culture. One should always distinguish clearly between the concept and value of both remixing the work of others and creating something entirely on your own.

It’s perfectly admirable for a young author ‘just’ to remix the work of others. Many famous authors have slaved away for decades before accomplishing now famous works of originality.

Clearly establishing a moral straight line between copying others and standing on the shoulders of giants to add your own contribution is what’s lacking in recent discussions. I consider this to be a failure of the ‘literary establishment’ who have proven themselves to be moral relativists and therefore deemed themselves, at least for me, not worthy of any further consideration.

People lie all the time. Even scientists do it. The Economist recently concluded an article about the (dis-) honesty of scientists with the fitting observation that “scientists are as human as everyone else”. This doesn’t help much with trusting humanity to deal with an ever-growing list of obstacles in our future’s way.

I fell into the trap of the confirmation bias: focus on seeing problems and soon you will feel overwhelmed by it all. But it’s absolutely ridiculous to worry about the future of humanity – it sure as hell doesn’t rest on my shoulders alone.

When you read about the ancient life, you recognize that there may exist a tendency in yourself to take yourself much too seriously.

This is why reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations helps so much – and why I consider it the greatest book I have ever read. It’s puts your life in perspective. You are awed by the recognition that everything is transitory.

Humanity hasn’t changed that much at all. In the words of Aurelius:

The age of Vespasian, for example. People doing the exact same things: marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business, farming, flattering, boasting, distrusting, plotting, hoping others will die, complaining about their own lives, falling in love, putting away money, seeking high office and power. And that life they led is nowhere to be found.

There is vanity to be found in constantly worrying. You have to be able to let it go to achieve a peaceful state of mind. It doesn’t ultimately matter whether or not we solve the problems of our times – they will soon be forgotten anyway.

What matters though, is how we go about it. How we live whilst hammering away at the opportunities (disguised as problems). As Aurelius says,

It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character.

But how to give back? How to enrich the world with value? I do not want to add to the amount of nonsense and superfluous things already out there.

What it ultimately comes down to, is feeling obliged to thank the world for granting me existence in a time of prosperity and providing me with endless opportunities. I have thought about how to give back and how to provide value to the world and its inhabitants for years.

Still, I am no wiser. 

Nonetheless, I consider two steps vital to figuring out how to give back:

Keep training my discipline of perception

The doctrine of the three “disciplines” is central to Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

Gregory Hays writes in his introduction to his translation of Meditations:

“The discipline of perception requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought: that we see things dispassionately for what they are. (…)

It is, in other words, not objects and events but the interpretations we place on them that are the problem. Our duty is therefore to exercise stringent control over the faculty of perception, with the aim of protecting our mind from error.”

For me it’s is all about differentiating between face-value and the deeper meaning of things. I still have a lot to learn here but hope to gain sufficient ability in it which hopefully will enable me to identify possibilities to further mankind’s good.

Start acting on my knowledge

“Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.” Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 6.51

My well-being depends on what I do. If you have been training your whole life to sincerely give back, there will be a time where you are called upon to do so.

I consider that time to start now.

Honestly, I am still not any wiser how to give back. I know, though, that it all comes down to what I do. If I focus on that, I will not get lost.

The price of advertising is obviously correlated with the impact it leaves on its desired targets. 

The more impact you have with an advertisement, the higher the price. The more focused target group you can show the ad to, the higher the price.

Before advertising really took off on the internet, measuring the impact of advertising probably resembled – by today’s standards – a guessing game: you inferred impact from  general audience or viewership numbers. A huge ad in the NYT was worth more than a small ad in the Rocky Mountain News.

What happened with advertising in the internet age?

Finally, the impact of advertising was really measurable – with far better accuracy.

As Steven Johnson so expertly puts it in “The Invention of Air”:

As is so often the case in the history of science, an increase in the accuracy of measurement led to a fundamental shift in the perception of the world. Marking changes in the temperature of ocean water enabled navigators to identify and exploit a pattern in the ocean’s currents that they had blindly stumbled across in centuries past: a river of warm water that runs from the tropics all the way up the coastline of North America, and then makes a sharp right turn toward Europa as it passes Cape Cod.

An increase in the accuracy of measurement led to the conclusion that traditional forms of advertising looked – and still look – more doomed by the day. Not focused, not relevant, not measurable – therefore there is no justifiable reality-based price-setting mechanism.

And this accuracy of measurement will get upended again and again. 

Google didn’t just display ads more intelligently on its search engine. It found a way to display more relevant ads and therefore more valuable ads.

There will be ways to measure even more accurately, whether actual consumers find the ad to be relevant – and to give advertisers direct feedback on that.

Umair Haque has it right:

Imagine a button underneath every ad at every newspaper, magazine, and blog that said: “tell us this ad sucks”.

Which will, in turn, disrupt current forms of advertising again.

Advertising will get ever more focused, more relevant and more measurable. And those forms of advertising will always be able to command high prices.

Think about it for a moment: Internet advertising revenues are expected to drop.

Is it the recession or another upending of current advertising models?

And truth be told: when some years will have passed, there may be no advertising anymore – it may be called user-requested product information.