I’ve only just heard about theplagiarizing/fabricating scandals involving Jonah Lehrer. It is, from the point of view of a German speaker and teacher, unfortunate that his surname in German means “teacher”. Though it may be meaningful, since he obviously had to teach us something, something many of us already knew: namely that even in the metaverse original content has a special value. Since the metaverse is supposed to be a greater mind space that includes the known universe, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that the extra space consists of rehashed, or, as Dustin Kurtz of Melville House calls it, ‘repurposed’ content (what a terrible word!). Of course, this isn’t true. There is plenty of original thought and creat ivity to be found on the Internet. But there’s also a small group of profiteers, who probably like to think of themselves as ‘intellectual entrepreneurs’, who are lacking the basic respect of other people’s word work  - plagiarism – and the reader’s justified expectation that anything announced as original is actually original – self-plagiarism; Lehrer was found guilty of both. This respect is basic, because it has formed the basis of creative communication since the beginning, and it is probably not too far-fetched to call it a cornerstone of humanity. … [Read full post]

Posted at 5:00pm and tagged with: 100 days 2012, plagiarism, Jonah Lehrer,.