Blog Seven

"Hip Hop Goes Transmedia: Seven Laws" by Marguerite de Bourgoing is primarily about how the new generation of hip hop is self made. The artists promote themselves by performing at open mics and clubs, and by having a strong online presence through blogs and twitter. It also talks about how hip-hop and fashion are so intertwined that a lot of these artists actually have their own clothing lines.

This article fits in with everything we have been talking about this semester. These hip-hop artists are essentially the embodiment of web 2.0. They are the users creating the content and distributing it without the meddling of the evil record industry. They are on myspace, facebook, twitter, blogger, tumblr, and flickr. They are participatory culture in every sense.

Miller's key argument is essentially that although in one sense nothing is original, in another sense everything is. He says that it is impossible to see anything outside of the context of what we have already learned. The way I see this is that we are all a product of humanities collective experience, and we can't learn or process anything outside of this context. I used the example of science in class. In a sense nothing in science is original, it is all a natural progression of what has come before it. Miller uses Edison as an example of this. Edison expanded on the ideas of others to create the phonograph, which is a new and unique invention. It was however only possible because of the work and knowledge that past scientists had helped to accumulate.

Miller's book is relevant to what we have learned in class so far in the sense that in our day and age we have access to more information than ever, and with everyone online contributing content it is extremely difficult to not include someone else's ideas or work into our own in some form. Though you may not be directly plagiarizing someone, no matter what you are incorporating someone else's ideas in your own.