by Eolake Stobblehouse

One fine early evening in November I was on my way to my favorite restaurant to be served my favorite rice dish (and be served by my favorite blonde dish), when I passed a hair stylist's, and was surprised to see in his window: iMac mice!

I looked closer, and no, it was not the famous ice-and-colored circular iMac mouse. These were a bit bigger, and had no button. But apart from that they were dead ringers. I mean these things even came in five colors, and almost the same ones as the iMac! (Better choices, though. The red was not pinkish, for instance.) The pretty objects turned out to contain hair gel. The promotion material reads "Is your hair year 2000 compliant?"

Now, when your ideas spread not only to the far reaches of the business, but also to other businesses that have nothing whatsoever to do with it, then it is safe to say you have a hit.

Of course this is not exactly a new situation for Apple. They are now "The leaders in color", as Bill Gates with typical arrogance puts it. But long before that, in the early eighties, they actually pioneered the beige look! And the fact that 9 out of ten good ideas in the Windows interface is directly ripped off from the Apple OS is not exactly a secret. And latest there's the new Compaq machine called an "iPaq" (good lord). In other words, Apple is generally an Idea Source for others.

To which my question is: Why would you need one? I once attended a writing workshop (Writers of the Future) where we did a drill that in its basics was simply this: Each writer was given an object, chosen at random, and told to develop a story idea based on that object. The story could be anything and did not have to contain the object in itself, as long as the genesis was the object chosen. Surprise surprise; nobody had any trouble coming up with story ideas. Ideas are everywhere.

I will even be so bold as to suggest that it is more difficult to rip off ideas than to make them yourself. Simply because they are not your own ideas, so you naturally do not understand them as well as you would your own. Which of course explains why derivative works are always less interesting and powerful than original ideas.

One of the most tricky question, traditionally, that you can ask writers is "where do you get your ideas?" They usually don't know. This is because you are asking them to look outside themselves for the source of ideas, and the source of ideas is themselves. Ideas are not fetched anywhere, they are MADE. They are the only thing in the universe as it works that are made from absolutely nothing. (And who knows, maybe everything in existence comes from mere ideas originally.)

There are, and will probably always be, artists who are Idea Sources for others. These artists are often doing much less well financially than the artists (musicians, writers, painters, filmmakers...) who borrow their ideas and build on them (or only borrow). This might be because concentrated originality is a barrier to understand and communication.

Now, I am not saying that the only good ideas are ideas based on absolutely nothing. This is rarely workable, and not at all necessary. The paradox is that great artists can actually rip off ideas left and right, and still end up with something that is completely their own, being derivative and original at the same time. I think this has to do with a superior understanding of how things work, and using this to take something in and make it all your own.

So for instance a good computer designer could look at the iMac and say: "Cool, an all-in-one compact computer, in colors instead of grey. Now how would *I* do that?" And he might come up with something that would not have existed if the iMac had not, and yet still was a unique design that made the world a better place.

Wouldn't that be neat?

- Stobblehouse