The Internet is all very well but it can be very vexing at times. It is particularly annoying when you have what you think is an original idea or an intuition only to find that someone else has already thought of the same idea or had the same intuition.
The other day, for example, it suddenly came to me that the inspiration for Don Draper in Mad Men was Dick Diver, the doomed hero of Tender is the Night. I was passing pleased with my brilliance but thought for the sake of appearances that I should first check with Google in the unlikely event that someone else had made the connection. Imagine my chagrin when I learnt that plenty of people had been there before me!
Oh well, back to the drawing board.
There's a name for this: anticipatory plagiarism. Robert Merton: "Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born." But as with your Don Draper idea, the lead time can vary.
ReplyDeleteI like that, Michael!
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