The Boggle of the Google of My Skull

Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk

I am alarmed at Craig Mason-Jones's piece “The Google of my Skull”, not because of what it says about Stephen Watson and Antjie Krog, but because of the nature of the argument Mason-Jones proposes and the conclusion he draws.

After declaring that one should consider an accusation of plagiarism "seriously", he snidely suggests Watson had done no "work" (whatever Mason-Jones means by that) and wanders through a silly experiment involving Google and Amazon, constantly disclaiming as he goes along. His "thesis" is the kind of aimless musing, posturing as research, that most first-year students overcome in their first semester. Google is notorious (or perversely fascinating) for leading the curious to the most bizarre and unexpected places. In any event, his tenuous grasp of the incident makes three-quarters of his "envelope scribblings" useless in terms of the debate he purports to join.

Of course, he might mean the whole experiment in jest, a deft play on the identifying and disaggregating of plagiarism. But in the context of his accusations this is not work either. In fact, it constitutes the flimsiest imaginable basis for the attack he mounts on the editor of New Contrast at the end. If one is going to call an editor "incompetent and irresponsible" and his publication "disgraceful" you need the weight of argument, not the candyfloss of a few minutes on the internet and the back of an envelope.

Perhaps Tom Eaton was mischievous in publishing the article; perhaps Stephen Watson was unduly harsh in his personal criticism of Antjie Krog; but it's precisely because borrowing, lifting, casual paraphrasing, and cutting and pasting are regarded with such apathy that the robust contestation of the protection of creative work is necessary.



LitNet: 30 March 2006

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