My most recent cartoon appeared on the web site of NPR’s On the Media. It was used as the graphic to accompany a story on the recent history of the political pseudo-apology, “Mistakes were made.”

The whole thing was a demonstration of the power of the creative commons and crowdsourcing. To make the cartoon, I used a $25 Mac application called Comic Life and a $50 graphics tablet. In addition to the images I make myself, I adapt source images from the public domain and other creative commons contributors on flickr. The last frame in the comic is an adaptation of another flickr user’s photograph of a polling place on election day.

On Thursday I posted the image on flickr and attached a creative commons license. On Friday, somebody from the NPR program found the image, notified me of their desire to use it, and used it on their site, with an appropriate attribution.

In 48 hours, two generations of creative adaptation took place among three parties who had no prior relationship and never anticipated collaborating.

The Internet is a lot more than just a bunch of tubes, Senator Stevens.