Reaching the limits of the plagiosphere

Ever spoken a fairly long sentence and thought about how that particular phrase was probably unique in human history? Take the sentence I just wrote, for example. People have probably said something similar but used different words to express that idea. Natalie Portman's character in Garden State relishes in this basic concept, but I've heard it elsewhere before. (Heh heh. Yes, I'm being ironic.)

Now, this article in the MIT Technology Review says humankind may be encroaching the end of the plagiosphere, or realm of ideas and words. That makes sense. When the first words were recorded, it marked the beginning of the exploration of the plagiosphere. But even by Solomon's time he said there was nothing new under the sun. Some 2,800 years later, his premise is only more correct.

From the article:

Emerging technologies are causing a shift in our mental ecology, one that will turn our culture into the plagiosphere, a closing frontier of ideas ... We look at our ideas with less wonder, and with a greater sense that others have already noted what we're seeing for the first time. The plagiosphere is arising from three movements: Web indexing, text matching, and paraphrase detection.

The first of these movements began with the invention of programs called Web crawlers, or spiders. Since the mid-1990s, they have been perusing the now billions of pages of Web content, indexing every significant word found, and making it possible for Web users to retrieve, free and in fractions of a second, pages with desired words and phrases.