In the olden days before the internet...

             
                               (photo from Wikipedia - but I did this job at one time)

The other day I was talking to a friend about an old gripe.  It's about people who were in business before the internet learned to either come up with original products OR do something to make them their own.  We'd learn enough about them to change the recipe, change the packaging, call it something different - something that made it our own.  We realize that is just not an actual concept for people who weren't around back in the olden days.  It's even starting to slide over to older people, and why not?  Why should we keep coming up with ideas that we can only hang onto until the first time we promote them?

We talked about a reel that's been going on where a kid asks an old guy how he figured out things before.  I personally mumbled about the Dewey Decimal System under my breath, but the old guy said, "We didn't!"

                 

You know, that's a fact.  You may have called friends who might have an idea.  In college I learned to call people who were renowned in specific fields on the phone while my knees knocked, and ask questions - which were almost always answered kindly.

Tonight a recipe landed in my email for gnocchi made with purple sweet potatoes, and it took me back to a great example.  

                                  Get the recipe at The Spiced Chickpea

                         

Our very first herb conference, we went to SC for an IHA gathering, and Tom DeBaggio was one of the speakers.  His talk was about handing down knowledge and how easily it could slip away.  He described watching his own father trying to duplicate the gnocchi recipe from his childhood.  Grandmother was gone, and there wasn't a written recipe.  His father tried several different batches and just couldn't get it.  I believe that it eventually brought him to tears, and that really made an impression on Tom, perhaps leading him to become a writer.  

                            

I realized that this is where we are now.  This is reality now.  We can find anything at the touch of a key.  In fact we can find 100's of gnocchi recipes!  Lessons on forming them, along with pasta making tutorials abound.  There is nothing we can't learn if we want to!  This is great!

But this is my fear (and suddenly I'm hearing parents when they started letting us use calculators for homework...), do we actually learn, or do we copy?  I think it's important to understand the ingredients, why they work together, what purpose each of them serves, and how to improvise and change from the original (or 10,000th).  If everyone just makes the same thing, eventually we'll only need one person doing each item.  We can have a huge factory for every soap, every herbal tea, every shoe, every comb, every scarf...  You get the idea.  What we put into our work is what makes it special.  Part of it is also about pride and KNOWLEDGE.  Eventually the originators will be gone.  30 more years, I figure, unless in the next deadline AI turns this post into a giant joke.  Then what?  Challenge yourself now.  Be the future.