Posthuman Blues

Rise of the Plagiosphere

"The problem here is that while such rigorous and robust policing will no doubt reduce cheating, it may also give writers a sense of futility. The concept of the biosphere exposed our environmental fragility; the emergence of the plagiosphere perhaps represents our textual impasse. Copernicus may have deprived us of our centrality in the cosmos, and Darwin of our uniqueness in the biosphere, but at least they left us the illusion of the originality of our words. Soon that, too, will be gone."

Words are simply a means. If we reach a "textual impasse" then we will go about creating a new infrastructure for our ideas. Ultimately, we must "rub out the word" and graduate to a more intimate form of communication.