I was on a shoot in San Francisco the other day and wanted to film the exterior of a federal building – an office of the FDIC is there, there is a metal detector in the lobby and concrete barricades to the entrance plaza. I suppose this is to prevent any homegrown or international terrorists from blowing up a car bomb next to the building, lest they should want to violently protest the fact that the government insures bank deposits.

The rent-a-cops at the front desk told me I could not take pictures or videos of the exterior of the building because, you know, 9/11. As it happens, it is 100% legal to film federal buildings, as the Department of Homeland Security makes explicit here. So their restriction on me was a violation of federal law and my Constitutional rights.

I was on the premises to interview a lawyer in his (private) offices there who actually has a framed copy of the Constitution on his wall. Nevertheless, when I filed a formal complaint with the DHS, he asked me to withdraw it so he wouldn’t have trouble with the building management. I like and respect this guy, though I lost a lot of respect for him as a result of this request. But I complied.

So, do our rights matter? Do relationships with building managers matter more? Is it an indication of a persistent immaturity on my part that I care about these things?

Many times in my life, when I have loudly insisted on my rights, my peers and others have often rolled their eyes and said, “Oh, Nathan.”

Oh, Nathan, why are you such a loudmouth? Oh, Nathan, why must you irritate people so? Oh, Nathan, why can’t you just sit down and shut up for once?

I think pretty much every person I know feels this way about me. So, I ask myself, Oh, Nathan, why do you care? I really have no answer. It feels incredibly lonely and stupid to waste my time and energy this way.

After all, these concerns can seem ridiculous in America. We are so incredibly lucky to have the freedoms that we do have – that our business and political leaders have allowed us to have. (Oh, Nathan.) We are so rich, so free, so spoiled. (Oh, Nathan.) Why should we expect that everyone will respect our legal and Constitutional rights, spirit and letter? (Oh, Nathan.) Haven’t they done enough for us already? (Oh, Nathan.) It’s not like we’re Iran or China or Syria or pretty much any African country. (Oh, Nathan.)

Shutting up now.

“I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.” Henry Ford

Followed a trail from boing-boing today, leading to an excellent series of short videos by Kirby Ferguson. Called Everything is a Remix, the series (the fourth and final video is due this fall) gives an entertaining and vividly clear explanation of how art and technology is never “original,” but always builds upon previous work. Part One, below, looks at examples from popular music. Part Two examines the movies, pointing out that of the 10 highest-grossing films of the past decade, 74% are either sequels, remakes or adaptations.

That’s a pretty extraordinary percentage considering how the entertainment business has succeeded in convincing a large number of Americans that all copying is theft – as if their entire business was not based on copying and remixing previous work. Part Two then goes on to show – in a tour-de-force of side-by-side comparison – how even a nominally “original” work, like Star Wars, is actually a transformed collection of shots, storylines, characters and ideas George Lucas borrowed from a wide-variety of sources.

The point of this is not that Lucas is a “thief.” The point is that this is how art has always been created. Other examples are found in Quentin Tarantino’s remix masterpiece, Kill Bill, and, in another extraordinary video produced by Ferguson (and made by Rob Wilson), The Matrix:

Everything Is A Remix: THE MATRIX from robgwilson.com on Vimeo.

Everything is a Remix, Part Three, is timely, as it applies the argument more broadly to technological innovation, with a special focus on Apple. Some people may still not realize that the Macintosh computer was not an original. It was a remix of ideas taken almost entirely from the long-term work of engineers at Xerox. Just as Steve Jobs did not invent the mouse or the GUI, Thomas Edison did not invent electric light, nor Henry Ford the assembly line. These men did what all artists and inventors do: look around them, synthesize what they see and transform it.

Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.