Ownership in the Digital Age.
Some thoughts on our work: its origins and to whom it belongs once we've released it into the world.
With all the talk and worry about AI models being trained with digital content shared to the internet, I’ve been thinking a lot about ownership. A quote by Virgil Abloh came to mind: “No one owns anything anymore,” and I can’t help but agree with him.
As we digitalise more and more, share more and more, and access more and more. Our work, our ideas, our creations, are no longer ours. Bringing me to the following thought. What does it mean to own something you’ve created, and who decides to whom it belongs?
Our work could only be ours if we keep a secret and is never released into the world. The work we make belongs to the location in which its placed. Our work doesn’t follow us to the grave. It lives on Earth. A continent. A country. A city. A neighbourhood. A street. A building. A room. A device.
Nothing is created alone, nothing is 100% original, and everything is inspired and born from something else. Even we as humans are not original beings; we’re an evolution. We can trace each our work back to some kind of source, and even that source isn’t original. It was most likely born from something else.
When we publish something to IG, who owns it? Us or IG? Yes, you or I made it, but we’ve decided we want to share it to the world through IG, to place it on a platform for others to experience. I believe by doing this, we no longer own it, it belongs to those who are viewing it. People will identify with what we’ve put out there and make it theirs—make it their wallpaper, their poster, their keyring. Once we’ve put it out there, we no longer have control over how it’s used.
How can we control our work? By caring for it. Watering it and giving it what it needs to thrive. Treat it like a garden. If left untended, it will consume and take over in an undesired way. How can we change the mindset from protective to one of nurturing, leaving the selfish “it belongs to me” attitude for “here, take it and let me help you make it yours”?
Everything is temporary. What we’re precious about today can break and disappear tomorrow. Taking Max Picard’s words from The World of Silence: “Things belong to us temporarily and can be called back to whence they came.”
Our ideas are born from previous knowledge and experience and can disappear within a millisecond. Leaving me with one final thought: how can we share and cultivate our ideas in a more open manner?