Remix Series

I think that the primary thesis of this series is that most of everything, if not most, than everything, that we have in our world today is a remix. This means that all of these “things” that we have, and appreciate, are not original ideas, but ideas that were taken from another source and changed. This implies, to me at least, that there is no such thing as an original idea or product, but instead, everything is created by the influenced of everything around it. If this idea is true, than everything, even our thoughts, can be viewed as a “remix” because everything that we do, say, and think is influenced by past experiences generated by the world around us. I think that Fergueson connects his concept of remixing to our learning about rhetoric in the beginning of part three of his series. Fergueson talks about how we all learn through “copying”. He talks about how all great artists and influences began as amateurs, deriving their own work from other’s and even copying others directly to build a foundation of “knowledge and understanding”. I think that this relates to rhetoric because using rhetoric is about making an argument, and attempting to influence the thoughts of your audience. Too me, what Fegueson is saying is that the arguments that people are making, are not even their own arguments, but instead are arguments that are made in the work that they are copying. This is very confusing to me, but I think he what he is saying is that any rhetorical argument that is made, is not made directly by the author of the argument, but the rhetorical arguments of the work that they have copied and been influenced by themselves. This relates strongly with Edbauer’s ideas that rhetoric exists “within a network of lived practical context”, meaning that the rhetoric of something is always changing as it is “remixed”.