Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and today I'm going to be talking about originality. What was the last thing that you created that was truly unique? We like to think of uniqueness as something that is extremely valuable. We don't really know why this is the case, but we imagine that creativity is truly valuable only when it is unique. I recently got some feedback for the show that said that what I am saying on the show seems to be something that the listener has heard before very often. And I actually think that's very true. Well, this episode is going to use the thoughts of others. And you might have already heard some of the things. I'm going to say in this episode as well. In one of my very first episodes, I used a quote from Steve Jobs and I promised that I would keep them to a minimum. But I figured since I'm talking about originality and I'm also talking about remixing ideas that other people have already heard before, I might as well use another Steve Jobs quote just to prove my point. So here is another quote from Steve Jobs. It goes like this. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel like they did it. They feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it. They just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. I can tell you as a creator that Steve Jobs' quote is right on for me. It may not be for you, but it certainly is for me. I often feel guilty that I'm taking the ideas that I've read in another book or that I've heard on another podcast or even that somebody outside of the field said that I'm trying to do something. I'm trying to apply to our field in the digital space. I feel guilty sometimes for that. And I think that's very natural. But I also think that that guilt is a bit misplaced. I think we have an imbalanced understanding of true creativity and we're mixing it up with originality. In just a minute, after I take a sponsor break, I'm going to bring another quote to you from somebody else who's a little less known in the tech community about originality. Today's episode is about originality. Today's episode of Developer Tea is sponsored by DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean is simple cloud hosting built for developers. They're dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. And in just 55 seconds, you can deploy a solid-state drive cloud server. Plans start at only $5 per month for 512 megabytes of RAM, a 20-gigabyte solid-state drive, one CPU, and a full terabyte of transfer. In addition to offering simple and affordable SSD cloud hosting, DigitalOcean is a great way to build a cloud server. DigitalOcean is dedicated to building out a strong community and supports open-source software. They offer a vast collection of hosting tutorials and invite developers to submit articles, and they pay $50 per published piece. Deploy your SSD cloud server with DigitalOcean today by going to DigitalOcean.com. Now, DigitalOcean has been kind enough to provide Developer Tea listeners a discount of $10 when you use the code DEVELOPERTEA. So go to DigitalOcean.com and use the code DEVELOPERTEA to get $10, and you'll get up and running with your own SSD cloud server in just 55 seconds. That's DigitalOcean.com. Now I'm going to give you a quote by somebody who might be a little less known in the tech community. His name is Jim Jarmusch. Jim has been a part of the film industry for years, and this is the quote. He says, Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films. Music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light, and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work and theft will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable. Originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery. Celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, Always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said. It's not where you take things from. It's where you take them to. The subject of authenticity and originality as they relate to creativity is a very popular topic of discussion, especially amongst people who are creating things in the digital space. And I want to say to you, if you feel like your creativity is a fraud simply because you're taking the ideas of others and remixing them, it is not. In fact, there are many different types of creativity, but there are two specific ones that this topic is kind of wrapped around. The first one is this idea of creating something out of nothing. The other type of creation is remixing or synthesis. The word that Steve Jobs actually used was synthesis. And this is when you take other ideas and use them to fuel new ideas. Of course, there's a big difference between synthesis and recycling. Synthesis is actually creating something new. And if you do that, you're not going to be able to do anything new with raw materials of other people's ideas or other people's work. Recycling would be actually representing somebody else's ideas as if they were your own or representing somebody else's work as if it was your own. And this happens more often with ideas than it does with work because we've all been taught of the moral implications of plagiarism, but very often we just recycle other people's ideas as if they are gospel. I am certainly guilty of this on many occasions. So this is why I ask you to do this. This is why I ask you, please take everything that I say with a grain of salt and have your own ideas, have your own thoughts, and have your own synthesis. This is particularly true when I'm presenting things that are not based on research, but instead are based on opinion. And I think you should do the same with other people's opinions as well. If you take somebody's opinion as gospel, as if it is absolutely true, then that completely goes against the definition of an opinion. An opinion is something that you yourself think about, and you think about the world, and all of that is wrapped around your perception of the world. So I not for one second want you to believe that my perception is the absolute gospel truth. Instead, I want to provoke you, the audience of this show, to create your own opinions, to develop your own perception, and learn from my perception as I share it with you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Developer Tea. I hope it inspired you, and I hope that you will go forth and have conversations, about perception and about creativity, and all the different types of synthesis that you are exposing yourself to on a day-to-day basis. Once again, thank you for listening to the show. If you have questions or thoughts for me, you can reach me on Twitter at developertea, or you can email me directly at developertea at gmail.com. You can also leave me a review in iTunes with your thoughts about the show. This is the best way to help other developers find the show, and learn a bit about what it is before they start listening. It also helps me to get more information about the show, and it helps me get an idea about what you think about the show. So thanks so much for listening, and until next time, enjoy your tea.