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RAHUL KUMAR

“Having a large number of people in a society who are misinformed is absolutely devastating and extremely difficult to cope with” – Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol (2017)

The word ‘original’ does not have a clear-cut definition as it is concurrent with the predisposition of several scholars and academicians. However, any kind of ‘originality’ involves authenticity or uniqueness either within thoughts, information, ideas or art forms. What is originality? It can refer t0 the ability to think and act independently, or it could refer to coming up with something original and novel.

The biggest breakthroughs in technology over the past 50 years are most definitely the creation of the internet and the introduction of the personal computer. Combined, these technologies brought about what is termed a “digital revolution”, which greatly changed the way information can be accessed and shared with the world. With the advent of social media, people were also able to share their opinions and views on anything and everything within a matter of seconds, which could be read by anyone across the globe.

The biggest pro of the digital revolution is precisely what it was meant for – information. As ideas could be shared much more quickly, scientific research networks could now extend across the globe, which enabled rapid technological progress.

But then, with this, the cons are not hard to see. As the website’s or application’s service providers had access to this information, the question of privacy now sprung up. The internet has also brought about piracy, which means the illegal selling of products (which involves digital media that includes research papers, movies and songs, television series, books, etc.)

Although people were able to access information, sometimes, these tended to be plainly one-sided. For example is the heavily argued case of the 2015 American elections, in which the data of people were used without their consent to target them with one-sided advertisements and articles for the Republican party. Popular media networks also sidewith politicians and leaders to write pieces that favour their agendas. Such practices severely dampen originality as people are inadvertently influenced and made to think from a severely biased perspective.

But can we say that in today’s world, no one is strictly ‘original’? Whatever we come across in digital media – be it via articles or books, movies or series, songs, and so on, somehow or the other influences our way of thought and gives us ideas to work on and implement in our day to day lives. This process becomes increasingly difficult to monitor as more and more information is shared every minute. Thus it is almost impossible to call anything as completely original when our ideas are heavily influenced in one way or the other.

The issue that keeps on aggravating the ongoing crisis of ‘originality’ is the digital reproduction of information or artworks. Walter Benjamin, back in the 30s showed us how things were mechanically reproduced without any semblance of ‘aura’ or ‘authenticity’ (Benjamin 2008). Benjamin’s ‘mechanical reproduction’ in our day and time is complemented with digital reproduction. There are multiple nuances and levels to this digital reproduction. From information plagiarism and copyright infringement to the blind imitation of certain art objects/forms such as photos, paintings, musics and cinemas, the reprehensible act of unabated imitation has obliterated ‘originality’ to the degree that our idea of ‘knowledge’ itself has become distorted and in turn, obsolete. This new age of information has constantly been providing us with data and figures to feast on them ruthlessly and vigorously on a regular basis. However, in the process of such accumulation of ‘knowledge’, we are being devoid of the spaces of ideas and concepts either knowingly or unknowingly that are imperative to keep the pace of our epistemological development going. This is not ‘knowledge’, rather a travesty of knowledge.

The internet has accelerated the process of misattribution or increased the likelihood of a statement being misattributed. It has accelerated the spread of disinformation about quotes. According to estimates, India has roughly 450 million smartphone users and 376 million individuals who use social media in some manner. The popularity of the internet initially resulted in a growth of social media platforms. On a daily basis, we come across a lot of stuff for which the source is unknown. Many times, in the name of well-known political, social, or intellectual personalities, or, for that matter, in the name of any prominent character, fraudulent misquotes are placed in front of the public, which the public believes.

The people’s objective should be to acknowledge the true writers, but many don’t care who said what—they prefer it to be a renowned person. One reason things get misquoted is that when people go online and enter in a phrase from a quotation, one of these huge databases, such as ‘Brainyquote’, ‘Goodreads’ often appear towards the top of Google. And it turns out that they’re full of disinformation, but most people aren’t aware that the citations offered by these websites should be taken with a grain of salt. As a result, they just repeat them. And sometimes people type in a sentence, and it looks like it has been uttered by any famous personality on a thousand different websites, so they assume it is true. One might wonder how tens of thousands of individuals could be mistaken, so people easily believe it.

Even people in high-ranking positions, such as the president/prime minister of a country, misattribute quotes. Various politicians can be found misattributing quotations in the Congressional record in America. There’s an example of President Obama misattributing a remark, and Hillary Clinton had a misattributed phrase in one of her books, and also Donald Trump. As a result, it is not an issue of one ideology/party/person but it’s a problem of every ideology/party.

However, people have recently become increasingly cautious of what they read online—it turns out, for example, that many of the snippets Google places at the top of search results are completely incorrect. In reality, this is the case with a large number of websites. If one types in any quotes, Google has made these cards, that display snippets from any page, and one can get the wrong idea if one simply reads that snippet.

Due to the information overload and limited attention span consumers give to these questionable sources on social media, false information, purposeful disinformation, hoaxes, and fake news are commonly transmitted, especially when little or no attention is made to question their validity. According to Pew Research Center, 23% say they have shared a made-up news story – either knowingly or unknowingly. Everyone is running out of time and wants to consume the information in seconds or minutes, which leads to consuming inaccurate information, people rely on social media for a quick fix, and they do not analyze if the material they read is accurate.

While erroneous information is frequently spread by ignorant social media postings designed to generate revenue through advertising, it may also be spread through ordinary people sharing wrong personal observations. Given that fact-checking is required, it becomes very important for both news consumption and fair reporting in this digital age.

Fake news, hoaxes, and blatant lies are spreading on social media because consumers are swamped with messages from dubious sources and aren’t paying enough attention to evaluate their veracity. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are taking major steps to shut down “bots” that automatically publish misleading material and limit postings posted on their networks to guarantee users weren’t bombarded with propaganda; however, there is more to do.

Students have rapid, simple access to a variety of information and knowledge via the internet in today’s digital age. While having access to knowledge is beneficial to pupils, it may also be harmful. In recent years, evidence and study have suggested that digital natives’ capacity to synthesize research and properly acknowledge original sources in their work may be harmed by easy access.

Today’s technology helps us invisibly, ctrl+C & V for copying and Pasting photos, writing, code, video, and more. The results can range from slyly uploading other people’s witticisms on Twitter in the hopes of garnering RT fame to print-on-demand books that are essentially copies of other works. Because of a mix of greed, confusion, ignorance, pressure, laziness, and ambition, a growing number of individuals are looking at other people’s work and pretending to have done it themselves.

Stealing other people’s ideas and work has become incredibly simple in all fields, from academics to art to music to the film business. People use other people’s efforts without giving them credit, given the importance of intellectual property rights, which provide rights to creators and owners of works created via human intellectual creation. Trademarks are symbols that differentiate goods and services; New innovations are protected by patents; designs for goods that have been registered; copyright for creative works such as books, art, and music is more vital now than it has ever been throughout human history.

Digital technologies are transforming not just how we communicate as a society but also how we seek and consume information. Ideas are rapidly being generated, innovated, and disseminated via digital technology. In the case of literary, cinematic, musical, and other creative works, as well as non-traditional labour outputs such as machine learning, software, and websites, copyright is the most common kind of intellectual property protection. Indeed, owing to digital technology, it now encompasses almost every kind of expressive expression that is preserved in concrete media. Copyright has become a major tool to promote efficient, creative output generation, management, and usage by lowering search and transaction costs, enabling trading and contracts, and structuring access terms and conditions. Copyright serves the greater economic and societal objective of stimulating creative work and the experimentation, variety, and innovation that it provides to the extent that it succeeds in doing so.

Since colleges and universities are major producers and consumers of intellectual property, they make great use of other people’s work. Institutions have their own system for sharing and preserving their creative outputs and maximizing the value of their own assets. In an increasingly competitive market, understanding the importance of intellectual property legislation may assist an institution to maximize the value of its knowledge and help explore creative prospects.

Stealing other people’s work has never been easier because of the easy availability of the internet. Given the ease with which information can be accessed, finding a little uniqueness in the digital age is becoming increasingly difficult.

Therefore, a few of the challenges in today’s digital time are fake news, privacy, digital literacy and abundance of information. There should be more emphasis given to scientific thinking and approach. The information we consume influences our life on a daily basis. Academia, art, cinema, business, social and political space is driven by the information we access and consume. As a community, our responsibility is to maintain originality and reduce the biases on false and misleading information.

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Digital Studies at IIT Gandhinagar by Arnapurna Rath and Team is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

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