Remix

One of my closest (if most complicated) friends at college was an English major. He was also a brilliant writer. Indeed, in every class in which writing was the measure, he did as well as one possibly could. In every other class, he, well, didn't.

Ben's writing had a certain style. Were it music, we'd call it sampling. Were it painting, it would be called collage. Were it digital, we'd call it remix. Every paragraph was constructed through quotes. The essay might be about Hemingway or Proust. But he built the argument by clipping quotes from the authors he was discussing. Their words made his argument.

And he was rewarded for it. Indeed, in the circles for which he was writing, the talent and care that his style evinced were a measure of his understanding. He succeeded not simply by stringing quotes together. He succeeded because the salience of the quotes, in context, made a point that his words alone would not. And his selection demostrated knowledge beyond the message of the text. Only the most careful reader could construct from the text he read another text that explained it. Ben's writing showed he was an insanely careful reader. His intensely careful reading made him a beautiful writer.

Lawrence Lessig, in his book Remix (Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy)